Secure Shell ssh

Installation

Secure shell is the exclusive way to get into the secure environment of the HWW machines. Commands like telnet, ftp as well as the r-cmds are NOT allowed and therefore are rejected by the firewall.

Warning: Access to HWW platforms via ssh will definitely be restricted to ssh V2 ONLY!

On HWW platforms the ssh software is installed. The user is responsible for installation of ssh on his platform.

The source of OpenSSH is available from

• HOME page of OpenSSH Alternatives for other platforms like MS Windows can also be found on this site.
  

For details on the licensing see the external link HOME page of OpenSSH

For details on the licensing see the copyright notice. Please read first the files README and INSTALL.

Please be aware to run the latest version of ssh client software. Most operating systems provide insallable packages and update mechanism.

Tips and hints

if you can't get a connection

this may have 3 causes:

1. Your workstation is not known by the firewall. Please contact Your HLRS contact person (adviser/Betreuer), or submit a bug-report to accounting via the Trouble Ticket Submission Form providing Your username and the static IP Address You want to access from.
2. The HWW platform, you're trying to connect to, is currently not running. Please check the appropriate status page for your platform.
3. Your ssh client is setuid root. Please remove setuid root bit or use -P (for ssh) resp. -L option (for scp).

If you encounter any problems while connecting with ssh, please use -v option to get more detailed messages from ssh.

Filetransfer without password (scp) using Protocol version 2

Login via ssh resp. Filetransfer via scp is also possible without having to enter a password. Authentification is done via a public/private key pair. The following steps have to be accomplished:

(system1 is the machine from which you logon to the target system system2)

    System1 > ssh-keygen -d
    Generating public/private dsa key pair.
    Enter file in which to save the key ($HOME/.ssh/id_dsa): <RETURN>
    Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): <RETURN>
    Enter same passphrase again: <RETURN>
    Your identification has been saved in $HOME/.ssh/id_dsa.
    Your public key has been saved in $HOME/.ssh/id_dsa.pub.
    The key fingerprint is:
    2f:5c:18:e7:g0:3b:fb:52:g3:22:1d:3d:a4:cf:b1:57 $LOGNAME@$HOSTNAME

    System1 > cd $HOME/.ssh
    System1 > scp id_dsa.pub System2:sys1.pub
    System1 > chmod 700 $HOME/.ssh

    System2 > cd $HOME/.ssh
    System2 > cat $HOME/sys1.pub >> authorized_keys2
    System2 > chmod 700 $HOME/.ssh

The key generation with ssh-keygen has only to be done once. The public key in the file $HOME/.ssh/identity.pub can be used for as many systems as needed.

Further information regarding ssh can be found at external link http://www.cs.hut.fi/ssh/ or at external link DATA FELLOWS - F-Secure SSH A good alternative for Windows platforms is external link putty

ssh-x509 Certificate based ssh access

This access method is currently implemented for testing and evaluation purposes. Following Systems provide this service:

• yari.hww.de (NEC SX-9)
• clr3fr1.hww.de (nehalem cluster)
• frbw.dgrid.hlrs.de (BW-Grid cluster)

Be aware you need a special version of ssh-client with x509 support. Detailed information on how to set up X.509 enabled ssh can be found on our webserver at X.509-SSH.

ssh tunnel

Due to security policies inside the HWW network for all HWW platforms, general internet access is not possible. For example to get access to software repositories (svn servers), a ssh tunnel could be useful.

Please find the following example to get access to a svn repository.

For Linux, Mac and Unix users: Assume the svn repository is: svn.mplayerhq.hu listening on port 3690 (default svn port) and your username on the HWW platform hermit1.hww.de is hpchugo. Then on your local workstation login and create the tunnel using following commands:

 ssh -R7777:svn.mplayerhq.hu:3690 hpchugo@hermit1.hww.de