Out of all of
the utilities available to systems administrators ssh is probably
the most useful of them
all. Not only does it allow you to log into systems securely, but it can also be used to copy files, tunnel IP traffic and run remote commands on distant servers. It’s truly
the Swiss army knife of systems administration. Secure Shell, also known as ssh, was developed
in 1995 by Tau Ylonen
after
the University of Technology
in Finland suffered a password sniffing
attack. Back then it was common to use
tools like rcp, rsh, ftp and telnet to connect to systems and move files across
the network.
The main problem with these
tools is they provide no security and transmitted data
in plain text including
sensitive login credentials. SSH
provides this security by encrypting all traffic transmitted over
the wire to
protect from password sniffing attacks.
One of
the more common use cases involving SSH is found when using scp. Secure Copy (scp) transmits data between hosts using SSH and allows you to easily copy all types of files.
The syntax for
the scp command is:
scp /pathlocal/filenamelocal remoteuser@remotehost:/pathremote/filenameremote
In the following simple example, I move a file named myfile from
the system test1 to
the system test2. I am prompted to provide valid user credentials for
the remote host before
the transfer will proceed. If I were only using ftp, this information would be unencrypted as it went across
the wire. However, because scp uses SSH, my user credentials and
the file and its contents are confidential and remain secure throughout
the transfer.
[user1@test1
~]# scp /home/user1/myfile user1@test2:/home/user1user1@test2's
password: myfile
100% 0
0.0KB/s 00:00
You can
also use ssh to send network traffic and utilize
the
encryption built into ssh to protect traffic over
the
wire. This is known as an ssh tunnel.
In order to utilize this feature,
the server that you intend to connect to (the remote system) must have TCP forwarding enabled within the sshd configuraton. To enable TCP forwarding on
the remote system, make sure AllowTCPForwarding is set to yes and enabled
in the /etc/ssh/sshd_conf file:
AllowTcpForwarding yes
Once you have this configured, you can connect to
the server and setup a local port which you can direct traffic to that will go over
the secure tunnel.
The following command will setup a tunnel on
port 8989 on your local system. You can
then redirect a web browser to use this local port, allowing
the traffic to go through
the encrypted tunnel to
the remote system. It is important to select a local port that is not being used by a service and is not restricted by firewall rules. In
the following example
the -D specifies a local dynamic application level port forwarding and
the -N specifies not to execute a remote command.
ssh
–D 8989
[email protected] -N
You can also
forward specific ports on both
the local and remote host.
The following example will setup a port
forward on port 8080 and forward it to port 80 on
the remote
machine.
ssh -L 8080:farwebserver.com:80
[email protected]
You can
even run remote commands via ssh which
is quite useful for scripting or remote system administration tasks.
The following example shows how to log
in
remotely and execute
the command ls –la
in the home directory of
the machine. Because ssh encrypts
the traffic,
the login credentials and output of
the command are completely protected while they travel over
the wire.
[rchase@test1
~]$ ssh rchase@test2 'ls -la'rchase@test2's
password: total
24drwx------
2 rchase rchase 4096 Sep 6 15:17 .drwxr-xr-x.
3 root root 4096 Sep 6 15:16 ..-rw-------
1 rchase rchase 12 Sep 6 15:17 .bash_history-rw-r--r--
1 rchase rchase 18 Dec 20 2012 .bash_logout-rw-r--r--
1 rchase rchase 176 Dec 20 2012 .bash_profile-rw-r--r--
1 rchase rchase 124 Dec 20 2012 .bashrc
You can
execute any command contained
in the quotations marks as long as you have
permission with
the user account that you are using to log
in. This can be very powerful and useful for
collecting information for reports, remote controlling systems and performing
systems administration tasks using shell scripts.
To make
your shell scripts even more useful and to automate logins you can use ssh keys
for running commands remotely and securely without
the need to enter a
password. You can accomplish this with
key based authentication.
The first step
in setting up key based authentication is to generate a public key for
the
system that you wish to log
in from.
In
the following example you are generating a ssh key on a test system.
In case you are wondering, this key was generated
on a test VM that was destroyed after this article.
[rchase@test1
.ssh]$ ssh-keygen -t rsaGenerating
public/private rsa key pair.Enter
file
in which to save
the key (/home/rchase/.ssh/id_rsa): Enter
passphrase (empty for no passphrase): Enter
same passphrase again: Your
identification has been saved
in /home/rchase/.ssh/id_rsa.Your
public key has been saved
in /home/rchase/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
The
key fingerprint is:7a:8e:86:ef:59:70:ef:43:b7:ee:33:03:6e:6f:69:e8
rchase@test1The
key's randomart image is:+--[
RSA 2048]----+|
||
. . ||
o . ||
. o o ||
o o oS+ ||
+ o.= = ||
o ..o.+ = ||
. .+. = ||
...Eo |+-----------------+
Now that
you have
the key generated on
the local system you should to copy it to
the target server into a temporary
location.
The user’s home directory is
fine for this.
[rchase@test1 .ssh]$ scp id_rsa.pub
rchase@test2:/home/rchaserchase@test2's password: id_rsa.pub
Now that
the file has been copied to
the server, you need to append it to
the authorized_keys file. This should be appended to
the end of
the file
in the event that there are other authorized keys on
the system.
[rchase@test2 ~]$ cat id_rsa.pub
>> .ssh/authorized_keys
Once
the process is complete you are ready to login. Since you are
using key based authentication you are not prompted for a password when logging into
the system.
[rchase@test1 ~]$ ssh test2Last login: Fri Sep 6 17:42:02 2013 from test1
This makes
it much easier to run remote commands. Here’s an example of
the remote command from earlier. With no password it’s almost as if
the command ran locally.
[rchase@test1 ~]$ ssh test2 'ls -la'total 32drwx------ 3 rchase rchase 4096 Sep 6
17:40 .drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Sep
6 15:16 ..-rw------- 1 rchase rchase 12 Sep
6 15:17 .bash_history-rw-r--r-- 1 rchase rchase 18 Dec 20
2012 .bash_logout-rw-r--r-- 1 rchase rchase 176 Dec 20
2012 .bash_profile-rw-r--r-- 1 rchase rchase 124 Dec 20
2012 .bashrc
As a security consideration it's important to note
the permissions of .ssh and the authorized_keys file. .ssh should be 700 and authorized_keys should be set to 600. This prevents unauthorized access to ssh keys from other users on
the system.
An even
easier way to move keys back and forth is to use ssh-copy-id. Instead of copying
the file and appending it manually to
the authorized_keys file, ssh-copy-id does both steps at once for you. Here’s an example of moving
the same key using ssh-copy-id.
The –i
in the example is
so that we can specify
the path to
the id file, which
in this case is /home/rchase/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
[rchase@test1]$ ssh-copy-id -i
/home/rchase/.ssh/id_rsa.pub rchase@test2
One of
the last tips that I will cover is
the ssh config file. By using
the ssh config file you can setup host aliases to make logins to hosts with
odd ports or long hostnames much easier and simpler to remember. Here’s an example entry
in our .ssh/config file.
Host
dev1 Hostname somereallylonghostname.somereallylongdomain.com Port 28372 User somereallylongusername12345678
Let’s
compare
the login process between
the two. Which would you want to type and remember?
ssh somereallylongusername12345678@ somereallylonghostname.somereallylongdomain.com
–p 28372
ssh dev1
I hope you find these tips useful. There are a number of tools used by system administrators to streamline processes and simplify workflows and whether you are new to Linux or a longtime user, I'm sure you will agree that SSH offers useful features that can be used every day. Send me your comments and let us know
the ways you use SSH with Linux. If you have other tools you would like to see covered
in a similar post, send
in your suggestions.
