What is SSH?

ssh (SSH client) is a program for logging into a remote machine and for executing commands on a remote machine. It is intended to replace telnet, rlogin and rsh, and provide secure encrypted communications between two untrusted hosts over an insecure network. Since your personal computer is not directly connected to our Grex server, the data you send us has to pass through unknown computers handling Internet data traffic. These machines have access and can read some of your transimitted data, if they choose. Your passwords and login info, among other things, could be stolen and, perhaps, used on other sites. SSH prevents all this by encrypting your transmitted data making it nearly impossible to understand.

How do I use SSH?

You need to download a program that supports the SSH protocol.

Most computers running Unix or its variants (including Mac OS X) already include an SSH client. Simply open a terminal or xterm window and type, "ssh your_login_name@grex.org".

You can download one such program for Microsoft Windows here. After downloading it to your Windows "Desktop", double click it to run. Our Host Name is: grex.org. Click the Open button and wait a few seconds for PuTTY to prompt you to accept our server's encryption key fingerprint. If the key you see in the PuTTY window is the same as the key on our website then click Yes. If you are creating a new user account, type newuser and follow the instructions provided. Else, type in your login and password.

What is Telnet?

Telnet programs are inherently insecure because they transmit unencrypted and easily readable data. Do not type in personal information (example: social security number) or financial data (eg: bank account details, password for a bank website) when using telnet. We no longer provide access via telnet.

Getting a Free SSH/Telnet Program

If you need to download and install an SSH program, the following programs are the ones that we recommend.

PuTTY (for all windows platforms)
PuTTY is a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Win32 and Unix platforms, along with an xterm terminal emulator. It supports scp and sftp. If you are using a version of PuTTY earlier than 0.55, you should upgrade to 0.55. The latest version of PuTTY can be found at the author's website: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/.
TeraTerm is another free Windows-based SSH and Telnet program. More information can be found here.
$Id: ssh.xhtml 1444 2014-03-23 18:01:57Z kentn $ We welcome your feedback.