setup ssh on home computer

[Koppology]

Hi all, I'm trying to setup a system where I can ssh from a work computer to my mac at home. I have comcast as my provider, and am using a belkin router.

Does anyone know how I might set this up, or where I might find resources about this? Thanks!

 

[crackpip]

There are a few things that you need to setup.

1) Turn on remote access in the sharing pref pane.

2) Change your router's configuration to forward port 22 to the internal IP address of your Mac.

3) (optional) Setup some sort of DNS record for your machine. The easiest (and free) is dyndns.org. If you have a dynamic external IP address (i.e. from Comcast), there are clients that will automatically update your IP address with the dyndns.org DNS servers. If the IP is static, then you just need to configure your dyndns.org account once. The only problem I've had with this setup is one company with DNS servers that refused to provide IP's for *.dyndns.org hostnames. In that case, I just used the IP address directly.

Google should fill in the details.

crackpip

 

[Koppology]

thanks!

Thanks, that was really helpful! I've got it set up and working!

For those who want to do this, it's system preferences -> sharing -> remote login.

I am concerned about one thing however -- will the internal IP address change, since I am using a laptop and am sharing the router with some other people who also have laptops?

If so, is there a way to fix the IP address to my specific MAC address?

 

[Valorite]

many routers have dhcp reservation features(though I don't know about your router in particular), which basically links a specific internal IP to a specific MAC address every-time. Which is nice for having an open connection at your home well still being able to have computers with specific IPs.

If your router does not have that feature, than you have three options.

#1. Disable dchp which means setting up every networked device in your home to use a specific IP.

#2. Sometimes the device itself(computers assuredly, though I don't know where to do this in OSX myself) allows it to choose to connect to a specific IP from your router. The only downside here is you can potentially get an IP conflict if another device requests that IP from dchp. This normally is a non-issue if you're planning to keep the device running 24/7 for the most part.

#3. Since the device typically retains it's IP address until it loses it's connection(non-issue if it's running 24/7) you can just leave it as is and be ready to change the IP that port 22 is being forwarded to in your router if it changes.

 

[belvdr]

Or option 4, give your system an IP outside of the DHCP's pool, so you'll never conflict with a DHCP device.

 

[Valorite]

Good point, and I totally forgot that., that's probably the best option 😀