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SSH has become our universal (Unix) external access protocol

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Re: SSH has become our universal (Unix) external access protocol

#21

Post by bluejekyll »

pjs_ wrote: post #18

Drives me nuts that somewhere along the devops journey people decided that SSHing into a private server used for internal tools is an antiquated and outrageous thing to expect. People for some reason are actually excited about the prospect -- "we're gonna make it so you never have to SSH!". Little do they know that I like SSH. A lot more than I like clicking on the AWS console. And then somehow we're expected to debu…

I think the use of IDEs really made this practice less simple. Terminal mode emacs and vi/m are simple with SSH, VSCode and other things start getting more complex.

I think the extensions to VSCode and others to run remotely with a browser are starting to bring some of this back into fashion.

Re: SSH has become our universal (Unix) external access protocol

#22

Post by sargun »

I wish that SSH would be disaggregated further. SSH has become the suite du jour for file transfer, remote access, and a handful of other things. Unfortunately, simultaneously, innovations have been made in transport protocols and elsewhere in the stack that we're unable to take advantage of.

SFTP is a great example of a protocol which has a discrete server (look! There's sftp-server on your computer. Nothing prevents it from running over TLS, or a web socket). I wish that this was the way the entire suite worked. I wish the multiplexing, and underlying shell implementation was transport agnostic (perhaps relying on SOCK_STREAM, or SOCK_SEQPACKET semantics), and the authentication, encryption, etc was its own thing.

Re: SSH has become our universal (Unix) external access protocol

#23

Post by mdgrech23 »

whalesalad wrote: post #5

Need to get a file from one box to another? Have SSH? `scp` is your friend: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSH_File_Transfer_Protocol scp remote.host:path.txt local scp local remote.host:path Need a fast proxy to browse the internet securely and bypass restrictions without a VPN? SSH SOCKS proxy! Supported by most operating systems, but I tend to use it directly via Firefox so that it is isolated to one browser. This…

I don't see how this gets around a VPN? I still need a host in your example. That's what I'm paying a VPN for, a bunch of hosts around the world that are relatively fast.

Re: SSH has become our universal (Unix) external access protocol

#24

Post by Sebb767 »

bloopernova wrote: post #11
j_m_b wrote: post #2

SSH port forwarding is one amazing aspect of this software. For one example, you can develop on a remote system by forwarding your local port 3000 to the remote 3000, using something like `ssh -nFL 3000:localhost:3000 user@remote`, all while going through SSH! It's an indispensable tool for modern development.

Ahh, good times. SSH tunnels and FoxyProxy to run X11 applications on remote servers.

You can also simply use `ssh -X`/`ssh -Y` and use your local X/Xwayland server for the remote app. This way you can start remote GUI apps like local ones from your shell.

Re: SSH has become our universal (Unix) external access protocol

#25

Post by RamRodification »

mdgrech23 wrote: post #23
whalesalad wrote: post #5

Need to get a file from one box to another? Have SSH? `scp` is your friend: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSH_File_Transfer_Protocol scp remote.host:path.txt local scp local remote.host:path Need a fast proxy to browse the internet securely and bypass restrictions without a VPN? SSH SOCKS proxy! Supported by most operating systems, but I tend to use it directly via Firefox so that it is isolated to one browser. This…

I don't see how this gets around a VPN? I still need a host in your example. That's what I'm paying a VPN for, a bunch of hosts around the world that are relatively fast.

It doesn't "get around" a VPN. It's an alternative available to you if you have SSH access to a remote host with its own internet connection.

Re: SSH has become our universal (Unix) external access protocol

#26

Post by kayodelycaon »

pjs_ wrote: post #18

Drives me nuts that somewhere along the devops journey people decided that SSHing into a private server used for internal tools is an antiquated and outrageous thing to expect. People for some reason are actually excited about the prospect -- "we're gonna make it so you never have to SSH!". Little do they know that I like SSH. A lot more than I like clicking on the AWS console. And then somehow we're expected to debu…

I think it's because a lot of people don't actually know how to get full use out of a terminal. When you have to manually enter ssh commands and credentials every single time, browser-based solutions become very attractive.

Re: SSH has become our universal (Unix) external access protocol

#27

Post by syngrog66 »

it has been for 20 years IIRC. its designed to be a general purpose way to do remote access and command exec, with auth/auth. like thats its whole ballgame. I think the confusion comes when people assumed it was merely a successor to telnet.

but yes this is why its so important for OpenSSL client and server sides to be as bulletproof as they can. its a giant worldwide SPOF and therefore a drool-inducing pinata for hackers.

Re: SSH has become our universal (Unix) external access protocol

#28

Post by graemep »

bluejekyll wrote: post #21
pjs_ wrote: post #18

Drives me nuts that somewhere along the devops journey people decided that SSHing into a private server used for internal tools is an antiquated and outrageous thing to expect. People for some reason are actually excited about the prospect -- "we're gonna make it so you never have to SSH!". Little do they know that I like SSH. A lot more than I like clicking on the AWS console. And then somehow we're expected to debu…

I think the use of IDEs really made this practice less simple. Terminal mode emacs and vi/m are simple with SSH, VSCode and other things start getting more complex. I think the extensions to VSCode and others to run remotely with a browser are starting to bring some of this back into fashion.

only if you are developing on a remote server which I never do.

I do use GUI text editors, file browsers and other tools that work over SSH.

Re: SSH has become our universal (Unix) external access protocol

#29

Post by samtheprogram »

mdgrech23 wrote: post #23
whalesalad wrote: post #5

Need to get a file from one box to another? Have SSH? `scp` is your friend: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSH_File_Transfer_Protocol scp remote.host:path.txt local scp local remote.host:path Need a fast proxy to browse the internet securely and bypass restrictions without a VPN? SSH SOCKS proxy! Supported by most operating systems, but I tend to use it directly via Firefox so that it is isolated to one browser. This…

I don't see how this gets around a VPN? I still need a host in your example. That's what I'm paying a VPN for, a bunch of hosts around the world that are relatively fast.

I used a server running in AWS for this while in China. Sometimes you don’t have a VPN, or using certain VPN providers might be heavily monitored and/or blocked.

Re: SSH has become our universal (Unix) external access protocol

#30

Post by aidos »

bluejekyll wrote: post #21
pjs_ wrote: post #18

Drives me nuts that somewhere along the devops journey people decided that SSHing into a private server used for internal tools is an antiquated and outrageous thing to expect. People for some reason are actually excited about the prospect -- "we're gonna make it so you never have to SSH!". Little do they know that I like SSH. A lot more than I like clicking on the AWS console. And then somehow we're expected to debu…

I think the use of IDEs really made this practice less simple. Terminal mode emacs and vi/m are simple with SSH, VSCode and other things start getting more complex. I think the extensions to VSCode and others to run remotely with a browser are starting to bring some of this back into fashion.

Unless something has changed, VSCode runs in a server / client model with the FE on your local machine and the code / language servers running remotely (I don't use it, I stick to neovim).
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