Using SSH

From OS X or Linux (or other UNIX OS’s)

Most UNIX operating systems come with an ssh and sftp client.

To use SSH, you must first generate a private/public keypair. If on a UNIX system, you’ll do this from a terminal. First, check if you already have a key:

$ ls ~/.ssh/id_*

If not, generate one, setting a passphrase for the key when prompted. (You may want to save this passphrase in a password manager.):

$ ssh-keygen

Send this key to one of the Artifex admins so it gets registered with your account. After this is done, you should be able to connect by running:

$ ssh hblanks@artifex.org

Where hblanks@artifex.org is your email address.

If this is your first time connecting, you may get a message asking you if you want to trust the remote host’s key. If so, verify that the key fingerprint is one of:

1024 SHA256:CeCZdETNXbPf2uoZw8CJnbCdlQW8G78ZUFsAjQT3eXE root@terra (DSA)
256 SHA256:0oqODWgXlItf9lDsSCY3CEMeAv/kIgYv/7pKWDwgrks root@terra (ECDSA)
256 SHA256:XhK8pQ1m74C7HfWmuS8VpI5TH7bV08iwCFaSg6DaZ3M no comment (ED25519)
4096 SHA256:LXpJJfdQH0WEDgld1/U2pfBjLUomwrjLTiPJxJROFZE no comment (RSA)

and enter the passphrase for your key. You should then be logged in.

Transferring files is as easy or easier. If you want to use a graphical client, FileZilla is a good SFTP client, as is Fugu for OS X. These programs’ websites should have pretty ample instructions on how to connect; just remember that:

  • the server you connect to is artifex.org
  • the port is the default (22)
  • the protocol is sftp
  • the username is your username (without the @artifex.org)

If you want to use a command line client, you may choose from either sftp, a command line FTP-like client, or else scp, a sophisticated version of the normal UNIX cp program. To use sftp, type into the prompt:

hblanks@terra:~$ sftp hblanks@artifex.org

and once you’re logged in, you can get and put files just like with a normal FTP client. Alternatively, you can use SFTP to transfer one group of files or directories to/from a remote server.

An example would be:

hblanks@terra:~$ scp -r -C public_html dante.org:

which would copy my public_html directory, recursively and with compression, over to the server dante.org. For more information on scp, sftp, or ssh, check the manual pages, which should also be available on most UNIX systems by typing:

hblanks@terra:~$ man ssh

and so on.

From Windows

The SSH client we recommend is PuTTY, available at:

And the SFTP client is FileZilla, at:

You can use the same settings given above, namely a servername of artifex.org, and a port of 22.