How to connect to a Linux Server via SSH

This is a short guide on how to connect from your own PC (in this case acting as the client) to a Linux server. The Protocol we are connecting using is called SSH, this stands for Secure Shell and allows us to remotely reach the Linux command line.

• Download the application 'Putty' this can be obtained from Putty.org
• Install the application.
• Specify the hostname (we are using rootchronicles.com but you should use your Server IP or hostname) and the port (the default for SSH is 22):

• You can select open now and you'll be prompted for the username on the next screen.
• Alternatively you have the option in the data tab (under connection) to specify a username (we are using root but replace with your own username, unless you are also using root):

• You can save the settings for next time under the session tab, choose a name and select save.

• This means that next time you can select your chosen save name, select load and your settings will be loaded:

Once you have connected you will be prompted for your password. In Putty you should be aware that the password will not appear as you type it, not even in asterisks (*s). To someone unfamiliar with Putty this can give the impression something is broken when in fact you are typing the password correctly. Another thing with Putty to be aware of is that by default copy and paste works differently to how you might expect. In order to paste clipboard text (e.g. pasting a password) the paste is triggered by just a single right click of the mouse. When copying text from Putty all that is required is to select the text, whatever is selected is automatically added to the clipboard.

• Open the terminal on your Linux machine. (Most graphical distributions of Linux will have a terminal emulator)
• We need the username we are going to connect to (in this example we are going to be connecting as root (this is the highest level user on a Linux system) and we are connecting using the hostname rootchronicles.com. Swap root for your username (unless you are also connecting as root) and rootchronicles.com for your hostname or IP address of your server. The command for us is therefore:

ssh [email protected]

• Then press enter.
• If you want to specify a port to connect on (by default SSH will work on port 22) you can specify this in the command. For example if you wished to use port 86 instead:

ssh [email protected] -p 86