Setting up sshd on Solaris 8

It is advantageous to use ssh instead of telnet and ftp. The telnet and ftp protocols send your login and password in plain text. In addition they tend to be scanned more often than the ssh port 22. It is also straight forward to change the port ssh uses on your machine.

PKGS to installs

Solaris 9 and 10 have ssh installed as part of the OS. On Solaris 8, you need to install it yourself. The easy way to install the ssh (server and client) is to use pkg-get. Once pkg-get is set up, you just run pkg-get -i openssh and everything is done for you.

Run:

• ssh-keygen -t rsa1 -f /usr/local/etc/ssh_host_key -N ""
• ssh-keygen -t rsa -f /usr/local/etc/ssh_host_rsa_key -N ""
• ssh-keygen -t dsa -f /usr/local/etc/ssh_host_dsa_key -N ""

Note that gcc should be installed for all the libraries to be found

Testing

First test that the /etc/init.d/sshd file is good. as root run:
 
/etc/init.d/sshd start
 
The sshd program should show up in the proces table

Try to ssh to your own node. For example, if your node is named mynode then you would run:
ssh mynode
Note that ssh is in /usr/local/bin

Firewall setup

Set up your firewall to forward port 22 to your Sun machine.