Lab 8: Intro to SSH

Objective Focus

Understand and use essential tools

Access remote systems using SSH

Official RHCSA EX200 Exam Objectives

So, what is SSH?

SSH, aka Secure Shell, is protocol for creating a secure connection between machines.

To connect to a machine using SSH, the target machine needs to be running the OpenSSH server program sshd. Then, we remotely log in to the system using a ssh client program like PuTTY or the using the ssh command.

Now, the target will listen on Port 22, which is a well-known port for ssh, by default. We work on networking topics later in the course, so if the above is fuzzy be sure to review Comptia Network+ topics as well.

RHEL 9 is already running everything you need for ssh by default.

In this lab, we will be “SSH-ing” into our minimal install server.

 $ ssh learner@192.168.50.10 

To get the IP address of your minimal install, “server2”, we can use command “ip a'.

 $ ip a 

After getting our IP address for the target maching, we can log in. In the command below, I will be using the IP of server2. This will allow me to connect to server2 from server1.

 $ ssh learner@192.168.122.102 

First time connection to a machine will prompt you to add it, in this case server2, to list of known hosts.

Enter the password and now, we shoud see our prompt change from learner@server1 to learner@server2

Now we can issue commands to verify we are on server2.

•  $ whoami 

•  $ hostname 

•  $ pwd 

To disconnect from server2, we can type in the “exit” command

•  $ exit 

That is all for lab 8!