Ground Control

The SSH server is installed by defauly but is not actually set to run at boot time. I'm going to activate it and have it listening to port 443 as well as port 22 which is the default. The reason for this is that corporate firewalls often block port 22 but 443 is used for secure websites. That means that I can use a tunnel and get a VNC session running over port 443 if I want to get access to my home machine.

To do this we need to add a line to a file on the /etc/ssh folder, so once again we open up a terminal sessiona and chnage to the root user by typing su at the command prompt.

Then type cd /etc/ssh and press enter, then type mc to open up the Midnight Commander and scroll down till sshd_config is highlighted and press F4 to edit it.

You should see something like this at the top:

#    $OpenBSD: sshd_config,v 1.80 2008/07/02 02:24:18 djm Exp $

# This is the sshd server system-wide configuration file.  See
# sshd_config(5) for more information.

# This sshd was compiled with PATH=/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin

# The strategy used for options in the default sshd_config shipped with
# OpenSSH is to specify options with their default value where
# possible, but leave them commented.  Uncommented options change a
# default value.

#Port 22
#AddressFamily any
#ListenAddress 0.0.0.0
#ListenAddress ::

All we need to do is to remove the # from the start of the line that says Port 22 and add a line under it that says Port 443, so the file would look like this:

#    $OpenBSD: sshd_config,v 1.80 2008/07/02 02:24:18 djm Exp $

# This is the sshd server system-wide configuration file.  See
# sshd_config(5) for more information.

# This sshd was compiled with PATH=/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin

# The strategy used for options in the default sshd_config shipped with
# OpenSSH is to specify options with their default value where
# possible, but leave them commented.  Uncommented options change a
# default value.

Port 22

Port 443
#AddressFamily any
#ListenAddress 0.0.0.0
#ListenAddress ::

Once you've done that press F4 to save the file and then F10 to come out of the editor followed by another F10 to close down Midnight Commander.

Now type chkconfig sshd on and press enter, this will make sure that the service is started when the system boots and finally just to make sure it's running now, type service sshd start to initiate the service. You can then check to see if you can login by type ssh 127.0.0.1 at the command prompt, you should get a prompt asking you for the root password.