A&A External Access

Latest Login News:

login.astro.gla.ac.uk has been restored, but on a different machine. Therefore the ssh key fingerprint has changed. The new fingerprints are:

SSH2 - a9:56:59:1b:72:93:fa:46:25:56:94:41:4b:7d:67:e4
SSH1 - e2:53:a1:69:00:ec:4e:0d:3d:03:9b:05:e4:38:8f:88

s/key telnet and ftp access have been withdrawn. Anonymous ftp access is still avaliable.

Graeme, 2001-01-11

Introduction
Logging in using SSH

Introduction

Access to other machines from inside the department is done securely using ssh, as most of you will be aware.

If you are outside the department then we are somewhat stricter about how and where you can connect to (this helps us monitor external connections and verify they are from genuine users). If you are going to travel abroad and will need access to your email, files or to login to the network you will need to read (and print out?) the rest of this page to find out how to do it. This page has the URL http://www.astro.gla.ac.uk/access.shtml, so you can refer to it, and its software links, from outside the group.

Access from outside (the short version):

Email
- If you are abroad, have web access and only want to read your email, try the webmail interface, which is always linked from the group's home page. (You will have to accept othello's site certificate: it has fingerprint D0:78:1D:49:C4:C0:67:90:36:B1:12:D9:1C:58:20:9C.)
- If you only have a terminal, then you'll have to login to our system and use pine. See below.
Login and File Copying
- SSH If you can, use ssh to login and scp or sftp to transfer files. You must connect to login.astro.gla.ac.uk if you are outside the department - no other machine will allow you access.

Logging in using SSH

SSH (which stands for `secure shell') provides three things: it allows you to be assured that the machine you're logging in to is the machine you think it is, it allows the machine to be assured that you are who you claim to be, and it encrypts the communications between you, so that they are safe from eavesdropping.

Basic use of the ssh suite includes loging on to another machine, copying a file from one machine to another, running a command remotely and starting an ftp interface:

  ssh phobos
  scp phobos:/tmp/download mydir/here
  ssh phobos /bin/ls
  sftp phobos

See the unix man pages for ssh, scp and sftp for more details.

sftp is more convenient than scp if you need to copy several files in different directories or cannot recall the exact path to the files (it allows you to browse and change directory, just like command line ftp).

SSH from outside the department

If you are using SSH to get access from outside the Physics and Astronomy department you must ssh to login.astro.gla.ac.uk. No other machine will allow you to connect. From here you may safely ssh to other machines in the group.

So, to login from outside the department:

  ssh -l USERNAME login.astro.gla.ac.uk

To copy a file from/to our domain or start the sftp interface:

  scp USERNAME@login.astro.gla.ac.uk:/home/USERNAME/astrofile distantfile
  scp distantfile USERNAME@login.astro.gla.ac.uk:/home/USERNAME/astrofile
  sftp USERNAME@login.astro.gla.ac.uk

Remember, you may be asked to verify the hostkey of login.astro.gla.ac.uk when you login for the first time:

SSH2 - a9:56:59:1b:72:93:fa:46:25:56:94:41:4b:7d:67:e4
SSH1 - e2:53:a1:69:00:ec:4e:0d:3d:03:9b:05:e4:38:8f:88

The ssh server will allow X connections to be forwarded, so you will be able to run X applications from abroad (although this will require a very good network connection).

Modem Tips

If you are sshing with a poor network connection (a modem at home, say), try adding the option -C to your ssh command line. This will compress the ssh connection session, so more information per packet can be transmitted.

SSH software

To use ssh you need ssh client programs. If you're on a remote unix machine it should have ssh installed already, but if you're on windows or a mac it may not. In that case we have collected some useful clients that you can download:

MacOS 8, 9: NiftyTelnet is a telnet application which can talk SSH, and includes an scp implementation. We have a local copy here
MacOS X: This is a Unix machine. Open a `Terminal' window, and follow the Unix instructions above.
Windows: For file copying, there is a great wrapper to around scp/sftp, it's called winscp. Just enter login.astro.gla.ac.uk as the hostname, your username and hit the LOGIN button. (scp and sftp both work, though sftp is preferred - it's slightly more efficient as it requires only one login.)
To get login access to the system you will need the PuTTY package. Download it from here. Note that putty.zip contains the entire putty suite, which contains some other handy bits. The PuTTY installer is useful if you want a proper "install", but the zip file is smaller and works just as well. Check the putty homepage if you're having problems.
All Platforms: Java Client: We have a java based ssh client, which is very convenient to use. It requires a modern version of java to work (properly configured recent versions of IE, Netscape and Mozilla should all work). Point your web browser at http://login.astro.gla.ac.uk/sshlogin.html and the Java applet should start.
After you have used the java applet you should close your browser completely for maximum security.

If you have a unix machine which does not have ssh, you will want to install the openssh packages. Most linux distros now include ssh, but if you're using a different flavour of unix you may need to download the source from the openssh web site.

Graeme, Norman

Last Modified: Tuesday, 11-May-2004 14:48:00 BST