A number of you have been asking questions about running on your Reclaim server directly. The tool you need for that is SSH, or Secure Shell. I used to have a great SSH tip sheet but it has been removed from the internet. We can talk about that later. In the meantime, I cobbled together a not-half-bad recap of my original tip sheet.
If you’re running Mac OSX or Linux, your machine has an SSH client built right in. Try it: type which ssh at the command line. Windows users will need to install puTTY.
To open a shell connection to another machine, you need to know that machine’s name (which you already know if you’re using SFTP to connect) and you need a username and password. Connect with:
ssh username@example.domain.com
It’s actually that simple. You’ll be prompted for your password, you’ll enter it, and your command prompt will change to reflect the fact that you’re now running commands on a remote machine.
Later, we’ll talk a little bit about key-based authentication, which is a much more secure way to authenticate your SSH session. But for now, passwords are just fine.
I found this good posting on generating keys for ssh: https://help.github.com/articles/generating-ssh-keys/
The article describes how to add the public key to your Github account, but how would you add it to your reclaim hosting account?
I found the answer. There is a folder called .ssh with a file called authorized_keys. You add your public key to the bottom of that file.
Also a tip. On a Mac, you can disconnect from the server in ssh, by pressing three keys in sequence: Enter ~ .
That’s the enter key, tilde and period.