ssh within home LAN issues

[Darrin Chandler]

On Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 04:46:12PM -0700, Dazed_75 wrote:
> The other day I decided to experiment with using ssh mostly for fun,
> though it could be handy to not have to flit between chairs just to do

Oh, yes. You shouldn't have to move from your "command center" just to
do something on another computer! Why, I've got a stack of computers
here with no keyboards or monitors. One of them doesn't even *have* a
video card (Sun Netra T1). Ssh is the way to go.

> something on another box.  I DID get this to work ... sort of ... but
> not very elegantly.  IOW, I have to do ssh username at nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn
> rather than using the name of the desired host.  Given that IPs can
> change, I still need to flit to another chair to get the IP.  Note
> that I do get the proper host name in the title of the terminal from
> which I did the ssh connection.  I suspect I need to do something to
> provide name resolution via a DNS server, Hosts list or something (the
> issue again being DHCP assigned IPs).

Yes, you need your DNS and dhcp to work together. I've got Sveasoft on
my Linksys and I don't remember if the stock Linksys configs will let
you do this. In any case, if you *can*, turn on the "local dns" option
on your linksys, and the dhclients should show up if you use that as a
name server.

> Also, the ssh material I read seemed to indicate that ssh supported
> running X based GUI programs remotely and when I tried that I got a
> message that it was unable to open the display.  This could again be a
> name resolution issue but I do not know.  Late last night I read that
> Ubuntu defaults X "Forwarding" to OFF for ssh so that could be it as
> well.

Not certain about Ubuntu, but it seems like OFF would mean OFF. I'd try
the ON setting! Might just work.

> Hence 3 questions for now:
> 1 - How best to not have to use IPs for the ssh functions?
> 2 - Is X "Forwarding" being off the primary/sole cause for the remote
> GUI failure?
> 3 - Where might I find CURRENT and fairly simple HOWTOs for ssh which
> cover this situation (I have read many outdated docs and which assume
> you are in a corporate environment with an internal name server)?

OpenSSH is part of the OpenBSD project. OpenBSD doesn't have HOWTO
documents, preferring to update the man pages and FAQ to include current
information. So I'd advise you to see the man page for ssh from the
www.openbsd.org web site. While it'll be written for OpenBSD almost all
of it will apply to Linux. But... the old HOWTO stuff for Linux might
still get you going just fine. But do try to turn that OFF setting to
ON, or find more specific Unbuntu instructions for X forwarding.

-- 
Darrin Chandler            |  Phoenix BSD Users Group
dwchandler at stilyagin.com   |  http://bsd.phoenix.az.us/
http://www.stilyagin.com/  |