If you've ever seriously used a Linux system, you're probably already familiar with at least the basics of ssh. But you're hungry for more. In this post, we'll show you six ssh tips that'll help take you to the next level. (We've also found that they make for excellent cocktail party conversation talking points.)

(1) Take command!

Everyone knows that you can use ssh to get a remote shell, but did you know that you can also use it to run commands on their own? Well, you can--just stick the command name after the hostname! Case in point:

wdaher@rocksteady:~$ ssh bebop uname -a Linux bebop 2.6.32-24-generic #39-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jul 28 05:14:15 UTC 2010 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Combine this with passwordless ssh logins, and your shell scripting powers have just leveled up. Want to figure out what version of Python you have installed on each of your systems? Just stick ssh hostname python -V in a for loop, and you're done!

Some commands, however, don't play along so nicely:

wdaher@rocksteady:~$ ssh bebop top TERM environment variable not set.

What gives? Some programs need a pseudo-tty, and aren't happy if they don't have one (anything that wants to draw on arbitrary parts of the screen probably falls into this category). But ssh can handle this too--the -t option will force ssh to allocate a pseudo-tty for you, and then you'll be all set.

# Revel in your process-monitoring glory wdaher@rocksteady:~$ ssh bebop -t top

# Or, resume your session in one command, if you're a GNU Screen user wdaher@rocksteady:~$ ssh bebop -t screen -dr

(2) Please, try a sip of these ports

But wait, there's more! ssh's ability to forward ports is incredibly powerful. Suppose you have a web dashboard at work that runs at analytics on port 80 and is only accessible from the inside the office, and you're at home but need to access it because it's 2 a.m. and your pager is going off.

Fortunately, you can ssh to your desktop at work, desktop , which is on the same network as analytics . So if we can connect to desktop , and desktop can connect to analytics , surely we can make this work, right?

Right. We'll start out with something that doesn't quite do what we want:

wdaher@rocksteady:~$ ssh desktop -L 8080:desktop:80

OK, the ssh desktop is the straightforward part. The -L port:hostname:hostport option says "Set up a port forward from port (in this case, 8080) to hostname:hostport (in this case, desktop:80)."

So now, if you visit http://localhost:8080/ in your web browser at home, you'll actually be connected to port 80 on desktop . Close, but not quite! Remember, we wanted to connect to the web dashboard, running on port 80, on analytics , not desktop .

All we do, though, is adjust the command like so:

wdaher@rocksteady:~$ ssh desktop -L 8080:analytics:80

Now, the remote end of the port forward is analytics:80 , which is precisely where the web dashboard is running. But wait, isn't analytics behind the firewall? How can we even reach it? Remember: this connection is being set up on the remote system ( desktop ), which is the only reason it works.

If you find yourself setting up multiple such forwards, you're probably better off doing something more like:

wdaher@rocksteady:~$ ssh -D 8080 desktop

This will set up a SOCKS proxy at localhost:8080 . If you configure your browser to use it, all of your browser traffic will go over SSH and through your remote system, which means you could just navigate to http://analytics/ directly.

(3) Til-de do us part

Riddle me this: ssh into a system, press Enter a few times, and then type in a tilde. Nothing appears. Why?

Because the tilde is ssh's escape character. Right after a newline, you can type ~ and a number of other keystrokes to do interesting things to your ssh connection (like give you 30 extra lives in each continue.) ~? will display a full list of the escape sequences, but two handy ones are ~. and ~^Z .

~. (a tilde followed by a period) will terminate the ssh connection, which is handy if you lose your network connection and don't want to wait for your ssh session to time out. ~^Z (a tilde followed by Ctrl-Z) will put the connection in the background, in case you want to do something else on the host while ssh is running. An example of this in action:

wdaher@rocksteady:~$ ssh bebop wdaher@bebop:~$ sleep 10000 wdaher@bebop:~$ ~^Z [suspend ssh] [1]+ Stopped ssh bebop wdaher@rocksteady:~$ # Do something else wdaher@rocksteady:~$ fg # and you're back!

(4) Dusting for prints

I'm sure you've seen this a million times, and you probably just type "yes" without thinking twice:

wdaher@rocksteady:~$ ssh bebop The authenticity of host 'bebop (192.168.1.106)' can't be established. RSA key fingerprint is a2:6d:2f:30:a3:d3:12:9d:9d:da:0c:a7:a4:60:20:68. Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?

What's actually going on here? Well, if this is your first time connecting to bebop, you can't really tell whether the machine you're talking to is actually bebop, or just an impostor pretending to be bebop. All you know is the key fingerprint of the system you're talking to. In principle, you're supposed to verify this out-of-band (i.e. call up the remote host and ask them to read off the fingerprint.)

Let's say you and your incredibly security-minded friend actually want to do this. How does one actually find this fingerprint? On the remote host, have your friend run:

sbaker@bebop:~$ ssh-keygen -l -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key.pub 2048 a2:6d:2f:30:a3:d3:12:9d:9d:da:0c:a7:a4:60:20:68 /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key.pub (RSA)

Tada! They match, and it's safe to proceed. From now on, this is stored in your list of ssh "known hosts" (in ~/.ssh/known_hosts ), so you don't get the prompt every time. And if the key ever changes on the other end, you'll get an alert--someone's trying to read your traffic! (Or your friend reinstalled their system and didn't preserve the key.)

(5) Losing your keys

Unfortunately, some time later, you and your friend have a falling out (something about Kirk vs. Picard), and you want to remove their key from your known hosts. "No problem," you think, "I'll just remove it from my list of known hosts." You open up the file and are unpleasantly surprised: a jumbled file full of all kinds of indecipherable characters. They're actually hashes of the hostnames (or IP addresses) that you've connected to before, and their associated keys.

Before you proceed, surely you're asking yourself: "Why would anyone be so cruel? Why not just list the hostnames in plain text, so that humans could easily edit the file?" In fact, that's actually how it was done until very recently. But it turns out that leaving them in the clear is a potential security risk, since it provides an attacker a convenient list of other places you've connected (places where, e.g., an unwitting user might have used the same password).

Fortunately, ssh-keygen -R <hostname> does the trick:

wdaher@rocksteady:~$ ssh-keygen -R bebop /home/wdaher/.ssh/known_hosts updated. Original contents retained as /home/wdaher/.ssh/known_hosts.old

I'm told there's still no easy way to remove now-bitter memories of your friendship together, though.

(6) A connection by any other name...

If you've read this far, you're an ssh pro. And like any ssh pro, you log into a bajillion systems, each with their own usernames, ports, and long hostnames. Like your accounts at AWS, Rackspace Cloud, your dedicated server, and your friend's home system.

And you already know how to do this. username@host or -l username to specify your username, and -p portnumber to specify the port:

wdaher@rocksteady:~$ ssh -p 2222 bob.example.com

wdaher@rocksteady:~$ ssh -p 8183 waseem@alice.example.com

wdaher@rocksteady:~$ ssh -p 31337 -l waseemio wsd.example.com

But this gets really old really quickly, especially when you need to pass a slew of other options for each of these connections. Enter .ssh/config , a file where you specify convenient aliases for each of these sets of settings:

Host bob HostName bob.example.com Port 2222 User wdaher Host alice HostName alice.example.com Port 8183 User waseem Host self HostName wsd.example.com Port 31337 User waseemio

So now it's as simple as:

wdaher@rocksteady:~$ ssh bob

wdaher@rocksteady:~$ ssh alice

wdaher@rocksteady:~$ ssh self

ssh! It's (not) a secret

And yes, the config file lets you specify port forwards or commands to run as well, if you'd like--check out the ssh_config manual page for the details.

This list is by no means exhaustive, so I turn to you: what other ssh tips and tricks have you learned over the years? Leave ’em in the comments!

~wdaher