SSH Cheat Sheet

Task: login to remote host with username and password

Login to host:

Task: login to remote host using a configured alias

First of all you need to configure the alias. The SSH configuration file is normlly stored in ~/.ssh/config. This is an example.

Once you have an alias, you can specify the alias name instead of specify all the options as parameters.

Task: login to remote host using key authentication

• Put your private key in ~/.ssh/id_rsa
• Ensure nobody can access it. After all it’s your private key.
• Transfer your public key in your remote host home directory
• On the remote host append the public key to the list of authorized ones with the following command.
  cat [public_key_file] >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

  1. </pre>
  2. </li>
  3. <li>Pay attention to the fact that the authorized_key file should be writeable only by the owner. If you forget that, the key based authentication will definitely fail.</li>
  4. </ul>
  5. <h2>Task: copy a local file to a remote host</h2>
  6. Copying file to host:
  7. <pre lang="shell">
  8. scp [local_file] [remote_user]@[remote_host]:[path]

  Copy the local file “readme.txt” on your remote host folder (don’t forget the “~”) using the “john” username. Let’s suppose the remote host is called “wonderland.org”.

  1. scp readme.txt john@wonderland.org:~

  Copying file from host:

  1. scp scp [remote_user]@[remote_host]:[remote_file_path][local_file_path]
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