Learning About SSH on the Side
This is not a GREAT find, meaning this lesson has not got me all excited, but I guess it’s a valuable lesson. Because I had to hunt quite a bit for it, i thought I’d mention it here in case someone else is searching for just this info.
Background.
I’ve been trying to set up a Google sitemap - because then apparently they visit your site more often and list it better. The instructions for their sitemap generator involve a python script. First you have to change a bit of info in the config file, and then upload both it and the python script to your site, using SSH.
Oh? What’s that?
So off I went on a search over several days.
I’ve now learned that it is a means of securely accessing another computer however far away, via your shell or commandline. However, the other computer has to be set up to allow you to do that. If it is not SSH enabled, you’re stuck. Blindly assuming my web host would have that, even though I couldn’t find a reference to it in the CPanel, I checked my SuSE 9.3’s Yast, and sure enough. with a click and a few minutes wait, I had SSH enabled, and even something called KSSH, which is by KDE.
A little window popped open when I clicked on it in the menu where it was added, and I tried to figure that out. Which meant going back online and Googling some more for how-tos.
During that stage I discovered that Konqueror has a little feature added that allows you to do this in a graphical way, using fish://username@yourhostordomain.com . Well, I’ll be…! So I tried that. It tried and tried for minutes on end, but each time I got an error message, apologizing but it could not connect.
Then I went to the forums of HostGator to see if anyone else had asked about this. Soon I learned that it wasn’t offered on any but the dedicated servers. Simply because when a server is shared with other clients, there is a chance of people using it to hack into other sites. Otherwise, it is definitely considered more secure than ftp.
So, I guess I’ll be making my sitemap manually as an .xml file for all 100+ pages. But I do have a much better grasp now of SSH, and fish too!
