SSH is a protocol for authenticating and encrypting remote shell sessions.

But, using SSH for just remote shell sessions ignores 90% of what it can do.


# ssh home -L 80:reddit.com:80
This article covers less common SSH use cases, such as:

using passwordless, key-based login;
setting up local per-host configurations;
exporting a local service through a firewall;
accessing a remote service through a firewall;
setting up a SOCKS proxy for Firefox;
executing commands remotely from scripts;
transfering files to/from remote machines;
mounting a filesystem through SSH; and
triggering admin scripts from a phone.

Sorry for the lame title. I was thinking the other day, about how awesome SSH is, and how it's probably one of the most crucial pieces of technology that I use every single day. Here's a list of 10 things that I think are particularly awesome and perhaps a bit off the beaten path.

Netcat, also known as the Swiss-army knife for TCP/IP is capable of so many wonderful tasks, many people only know a partial amount of the features so I made a special cheat sheet for all the basic and more advanced features it supports.

There are some misconceptions that shell scripts are only for a CLI environment. You can easily use various tools to write GUI and/or network (socket) scripts under KDE or Gnome desktops. Shell scripts can make use of some of the GUI widget (menus, warning boxs, progress bars etc). You can always control the final output, cursor position on screen, various output effects, and so on. With the following tools you can build powerful, interactive, user friendly UNIX / Linux bash shell scripts.


Creating GUI application is not just expensive task but task that takes time and patience. Luckily, both UNIX and Linux ships with plenty of tools to write beautiful GUI scripts. The following tools are tested on FreeBSD and Linux operating systems but should work under other UNIX like operating systems.

Homebrew is the easiest and most flexible way to install the UNIX tools Apple didn't include with OS X.

Manually transferring a file or files via FTP is a common and convenient method for moving data from one computer to another, especially if it’s a non-recurring event. But the reality is there are many times when an event is recurring and calls for immediate automation. This can be done by using a simple UNIX script file, which can then be executed via command line interface or added to the crontab. In the shell script, myftp.sh, example below, I'm FTP’ing binary type files (pictures) from a local computer to a remote while logging the activity.