How To Connect To Your Server Using SSH

Setup using an SSH tunnel machine

SSH is about as cool as sliced bread, if maybe not a little bit more so. Seriously, it’s a great way to get at your server’s terminal shell, which—as we all know—is the hotbed of power. From there you can change just about any aspect of the server, not to mention seriously screw things up if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Regardless of your skill level or knowledgeability, if you’re going to do any serious web mastering with your server, you’ll need to access the server shell at some point. To do this, you’ll need to tunnel commands server-side via SSH. There are several ways to accomplish this, but each operating system treats the process slightly differently. Lucky for you, we’ve got a common way to get at your server via SSH for all three major operating systems. No need to thank us, though: This is by no means a comprehensive methods list, but rather just a quick guide to dipping your toe in the water. For more complex entry methods, hit up the Big-G and google it.

In the meantime, though, check below for our ways of getting to your server via SSH!

SSH Access For Windows:
Windows is complicated, and because of that, we’ll get it out of the way quick. Windows, unlike Linux or Macintosh (which we’ll look at in just a second) is not based on UNIX, and does not come stock with any kind of SSH client. However, there are plenty of utilities out there that will get the job done. Without sending you to a search engine, though, you can use our favorite in the meantime: PuTTY.

This handy application provides a pleasant enough graphical interface from which to get at your server. Just enter the name of the host, then choose SSH as your connection type. If you’d like, you can save the information for further use. Then enter your username and password, and PuTTY should do the rest.

For Linux:
Linux, by nature of its internal coding, is much less of a pain in the derriere. All you have to do is locate your local terminal application (this varies from distro to distro, so look carefully) and then type the following string:

ssh -l your-username yourserver-or-ip.com

For Macintosh:
For Mac users, enter the same command as above, only use the native Terminal application, which can be found in your Utilities folder. Easy as pie, right?

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