Ssh server over internet ?

**o.besner** · July 24th, 2008

Hi all.

Me, my friends and my sister want to share pictures and music over the internet. I have Ubuntu, my sister has Vista, most of my friends have XP, and two of them have Macs (OS X 10.4 or 10.5, it all looks the same to me). I would be the main server, people would connect to my computer.Cross-platform compatibility is a must, so I tried Hamachi, and it's buggy as hell

--> Hence I'm now trying OpenSSH. I heard there are tons of GUI's to connect to an SSH server on every OS.

So I've read about it, and i've figured out how to connect to a computer in a LAN --> my computer name is Frankie3 and my username is besner, so in a LAN I used :

ssh besner@Frankie3

But I can't figure out how someone over the internet can connect to my computer, especially since I'm behind a Router. I'm no n00b in computer, but I am in networking. I know how to forward ports.

So let's say I forward port 22 to my computer, and I create an account named "leech" for my pal. Let's say my internet IP is 24.200.100.101 and my local IP is 192.168.0.1

using the command

Code:

ssh leech@24.200.100.101

Would this work ??? Would he be able to log in ?

And how do I choose which file I'll share with him ? and how does he copy them to his computer ??

That's the part I need help with. Thanks alot.

**Potatoj316** · July 24th, 2008

I dont think you want ssh in this case. If you do I can explain it, its not too hard, your pretty much there. I would sugest ftp. I use pure-ftpd as my ftp server

Code:

sudo aptitude install pure-ftpd

then you have to foreword port 21 to your computer (good job at discovering that btw) and tell them your IP (not local, your external IP) your username, and your password

**The Cog** · July 24th, 2008

That should work.

You can't choose which files to share with him using SSH though. It offers the entire contents of the filesystem (that user leech would be able to see locally). That includes everything in leech's home directory, all the /usr/share, /tmp etc. I think that's a real shortcoming of SSH to be honest.

Filezilla is a good sfpt client for windows.
Nautilus works nicely for Gnome.
I guess OSX has its own SFTP client.

**o.besner** · July 24th, 2008

I heard SSH is more stable than FTP. That's why I chose SSH. Any truth in that ?

**Potatoj316** · July 24th, 2008

SSH is not the same thing as FTP. You are dealing with 2 different things here. SSH is Secure SHell, it is useful for controling a remote computer. FTP is File Transfer Protocol, it is useful for sharing files. SSH is more secure than FTP but thats not the point, you cant really move files from one computer to another computer with SSH. The ability to see all the files on the remote computer with SSH is not a shortcoming at all, it is the purpose of SSH.

**ktrnka** · July 24th, 2008

SSH is much more secure than FTP and can do much more than just share files. I have found ssh to be much less problematic and easier to set up than FTP.

**o.besner** · July 24th, 2008

Originally Posted by Potatoj316

SSH is not the same thing as FTP. You are dealing with 2 different things here. SSH is Secure SHell, it is useful for controling a remote computer. FTP is File Transfer Protocol, it is useful for sharing files. SSH is more secure than FTP but thats not the point, you cant really move files from one computer to another computer with SSH. The ability to see all the files on the remote computer with SSH is not a shortcoming at all, it is the purpose of SSH.

ROFL. Thanks. That explains alot of things...

If I could give you a "You just pwned someone" tag, I'd give it to you, but since there is no such things I'll give ya a "Thanks" instead

I'll try Pure-Ftpd, I'll see if I can get it to work. I'll keep the SSH server though, it's kinda nice. I can remote-control my computer if I'm away.

**o.besner** · July 24th, 2008

Ok I got Pure-ftpd to work, and its smooth.

The Only things I haven't found out yet is 1) how to prevent user "leech" from acessing any other folder than "Music" and "Pictures".

2) Can I limit the transfer speed ?

**The Cog** · July 24th, 2008

You can probably limit transfer rates using iptables or tc, but I dont know the details.

Dont overlook the fact that SSH/SFTP does FTP style file transfer as well as telnet style logins. Its the file transfer side that is of interest in this thread.