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Help! ssh setup

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kartal:
Hi

I managed to install SSH on most of my computers using Cygwin and Copssh. For some reason one of my laptops did not like Cygwin and SSH just did not work on it so I ended up installing Copssh which seem to work now. Now everything works fine within my network but I have couple things I need to figure out. Hopefully there are couple experienced users here.

1- I have forwarded port 22 in my firewall to my laptop so that I can access over the internet. I have not tried it outside but hopefully it would work. My question is that I also would like to access my dekstop using  ssh from the outside world. But the thing is that I do not want to enable another port in my firewall for my desktop(tried did not work anyways) to my desktop because I have all kinds of important stuff on it. So here is what I want to do and I do not know how to do it. I want to be able to connect to my laptop from outside and somehow enable some of the drives(on my desktop) that are not shared and enable some form of access temporarily and disable  when I do not need them. At the moment I have shared drives(on my desktop) and I can access them once I logged into ssh account via "cd  //server name/share". The thing is that I also have some drives that I do not even share inside my network. And those are the ones I want to be able to access from outside.


2- Regarding the issue above, is it possible to switch port forwarding on my router(linksys) via ssh? I know it sounds silly but since I have ddwrt on it I thought maybe it is possible to connect to it via command line. I will investigate this one later but for now it is easier for me to ask here.


3-I am also trying to understand this public key private key thingies. I read couple pages but so far I have not found any simple tutorial. Are they  better than using passwords? If so how can I setup? Does anyone know any simple tutorial for putty-cygwin(client server)

4- I also want to be able to use git or bazaar over ssh. These parts of their documentation is little vague. They all assume some implicit understanding of how those systems work. I have used tortoise in the past but on mylocal systed. I know the basics of checkin checkout but have not really figured out how I can check out, update via sftp. It seems possible but not well covered I think

5-I need to figure out connecting to xserver thing. I can start xserver but never tried it connecting from outside. If anyone knows any simple tutorial that would be great.



Sorry for so many questions but I am exhausted for 2 days due to trying to get this ssh stuff work properly. It is easy if you are lucky(no problems within your system) but 2 of my machines gave me major headache and I ended up reinstalling Cygwin so many times. On one machine it took only 5 min on another over half a day. Go figure. I have no idea why that would be the case really.


thanks

Shades:
1 - is setting up a VPN network not easier...taking into account the things you want to do when accessing from the outside? OpenVPN could be a candidate.

2 - No clue

3 - Ah, PKI...it is not that hard. Since you are in control of the network you can use/become your own CA and hand out keys to yourself (only). You don't need to go through all steps that are normally required...assuming that you trust yourself at least.  :) Again, the OpenVPN package has a nice script with which you can create all required certificates/keys (it comes with a short to the point manual). All for free. The script uses OpenSSL, which is also part of the OpenVPN package.

Importing those keys is easy as well, double click on them and use the defaults from the wizard, those are normally adequate. When you have still questions after following the manual, don't hesitate to contact me.

4 - And again no clue.

5 - XMing? This software works nice.

4wd:
1 - is setting up a VPN network not easier...taking into account the things you want to do when accessing from the outside? OpenVPN could be a candidate.-Shades (July 04, 2009, 09:00 PM)
--- End quote ---

I agree if you want to access the desktop via RDP, VNC, etc.

2 - Access a PC local to the router via RDP, open a browser, access the router config and change it.  This is the way I do it and the easiest if you're not willing to allow WAN access to the router configuration interface.

kartal:
Thanks for the follow up guys.

In short, what makes openvpn better than ssh? I am not very literate about this stuff just learning.

Shades:
In your case, with a VPN you create a bridge between your own network and the network you are currently at using the internet. A tunnel if you will. You have to use some kind of PKI setup to secure the communication through this tunnel. You could then use RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) to connect to your Windows box(es) or VNC to access your Windows/Linux box(es).

OpenVPN is an open source tool (server and client) that comes with all requirements and will likely not set of too much alarm bells with the IT department on your job, which is why I mentioned it. There are also commercial packages and freeware.

Setting up a VPN server at your home network is not as easy as it seems, but OpenVPN does not make it too hard either. For example, SSH together with Putty would be tool to use to access your home network if the VPN server failed and you want to restart it.

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