Getting started with OpenSSH

OpenSSH is quite possibly the most useful tool in existence for managing Linux servers. Of all the countless utilities available, this is the one I recommend that everyone starts practicing as soon as they can. Technically, I could probably better fit a section for setting up OpenSSH in Chapter 11, Setting Up Network Services, but this utility is very handy, and we should start using it as soon as possible.

OpenSSH allows you to open a command shell on other Linux servers, enabling you to run commands as if you were there in front of the server. For Linux administrators like us, this is extremely convenient. We could be tasked with managing dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of servers.

With OpenSSH, we can manage our entire server architecture without even getting out of our chairs. In this section, I’ll give you some information on OpenSSH and how to install it, and then I’ll finish up the section with a few examples of actually...