In the world of Linux and server management, SSH (Secure Shell) is a critical tool for secure communication between machines. SSH keys provides a more secure alternative compared to password-based logins. In this guide, we will walk you through the process of setting up and using an SSH private key for logging into a Linux server.

What You Need to SSH with Private Key 

Step 1: Generating Your SSH Key Pair

The first step is to create a pair of SSH keys on your local machine. This pair consists of a public key and a private key.

  1. Open a terminal on your local machine.
  2. Type the command `ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096` to generate a new SSH key pair.
  3. When prompted, enter a file in which to save the key. Press Enter to accept the default location.
  4. Enter a secure passphrase when prompted; this adds an extra layer of security.

Step 2: Copying Your Public Key to the Server

Once your SSH key pair is generated, you need to place the public key on the server.

  1. Use the command `ssh-copy-id user@your_server_ip` to copy the public key. Replace `user` with your username and `your_server_ip` with your server’s IP address.
  2. Enter your password when prompted.

Step 3: Logging in Using Your SSH Key

Now that your public key is on the server, you can log in using your SSH key.

  1. To connect to the server, use the command `ssh user@your_server_ip`.
  2. If you set a passphrase for your private key, enter it when prompted.

Troubleshooting

If you encounter issues, check the following:

Conclusion

Using SSH keys for logging into your Linux server is a more secure and convenient method than using traditional passwords. Once set up, it simplifies your workflow and enhances your system’s security.

Remember, always keep your private key secure and never share it with anyone.

 

Faster time to value for developers means that Jamf customers have new features in their hands before having to request them

Jamf has made all things Apple easier for individuals and organizations since 2002. Zach Halmstad, Jamf co-founder, originally worked full-time in the IT department at the University of Wisconsin on the Eau Claire (UWEC) campus deploying, updating and tracking over 400 student and faculty Macs. He soon partnered with Chip Pearson who led a premiere Minneapolis IT consultancy and they co-founded Jamf. 

The core mission at Jamf is to empower all its customers to succeed with Apple and deliver the gold standard in Apple device management.

Just over three years ago Jamf, like most digital business enterprises, needed to go to market faster with new features and solutions continuously. The problem was getting virtual machines (VMs) and test environments fast enough to developers who were streamlining their processes. 

“We didn’t want to become the ‘no’ team,” as Jason Gamroth, Enterprise Services Manager at Jamf describes. “We are always striving to provide the best solutions for real problems that our customers have, and do it in a way that empowers them and gets IT out of the way.” 

Jason had come from a more controlled IT environment and getting secure, sanctioned infrastructure resources wasn’t trivial. Not everything was approved for one reason or another—cost, security, and performance all played a role in the decision.

Jamf developers needed more continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) solutions to match the pace of their more agile development schedules. They had a solid base of existing VMs, which were leveraged for much of their existing workloads, but keeping them up-to-date and issuing new ones for new development initiatives did not scale well for Jamf. They were in a fast-paced startup mode. Non-technical people at Jamf also had a tough time getting resources and did not have the expertise to provision for themselves.

Jason and his team at Jamf wanted a solution that could be provisioned for self-service as well as efficient and user-friendly. From a technical perspective, he also wanted to orchestrate sophisticated, complex provisioning scenarios behind the scenes for the developers. 

Let’s face it. Jason did not want his department to be the bottleneck in a thriving startup industry where they had to wait for VMs and then have to do a lot of post-provisioning after they had their resources running. As long as the builds were what they asked for, the developers did not care where they came from or how they were configured with backend complexity. The team went from being an IT champion to a hero using CloudBolt. They leveraged CloudBolt’s ability to orchestrate, automate, and provision resources into standardized “application development stacks” to request with just one click.

Since that time, the number of VMs they manage has more than tripled and they have successfully implemented many new initiatives using CloudBolt. In addition, not only the developers on the front lines, but also the security, support, and QA teams are now using CloudBolt to provision ready-made sets of VMs that can be configured quickly and maintained consistently. 

According to Jason, “CloudBolt was immediately straight-forward and elegant. We had tried other similar products but got further in 30 minutes with CloudBolt than we did in 3 months with another solution.”

Jamf leveraged CloudBolt to do the following:

CloudBolt makes it easier for Jamf to roll out access to resources in AWS and Google Cloud. Super users have access to these public resources now as sandboxes in these environments. They plan to set them up to configure blueprints in CloudBolt that will be accessed by the same easy-to-use self-service portal that they use now for their on-premises VMs. 

 Ready to learn more? See it for yourself.

The race to build digital solutions that entice us with new experiences continues its momentum for ride sharing, home sharing, food delivery, and financial planning. Energized by the ability to build apps that scale quickly with demand, digital disruptors have made it possible for us to now rent cars hourly from private owners. Drivers can self pick up a vehicle on-demand enabled by an Internet of Things (IoT) sensor and mobile app. Financial planning disruptors make it now possible for us to buy and sell partial shares of financial stocks based on our moods or core beliefs at any time of the day.

Recently, this digital momentum surprised me when I found out that you can now order fast food and convenience groceries for delivery from 7-Eleven in minutes, wherever you are—in a park, on the beach—as long as you’re within the required radius of at least one 7-Eleven store. With a mobile app and a network of delivery pros from DoorDash, you can have a Slurpee and a pack of Twizzlers in less than 30 minutes. The DoorDash drivers work whatever hours they want and are incentivised by real-time market analysis and demand. 

A complex digital ecosystem supports all of this interconnectedness with apps running on individual mobile devices for both the consumers and the delivery people. There’s also the backend systems of complex application architectures for the retail chains and, of course,the financial transaction processing with connectivity to bank accounts for payment through a network of providers to deposit in the banks of the retailer and delivery person. Add to all of that the supply chain apps that are used to produce and merchandise those end products like Slurpees and groceries and take-out meals, and you have a digital universe that is humming along like no one could have imagined even a few years ago. Technology is the business.

What enables this digital disruption? It’s the application programming interfaces (APIs) that provide a way for applications and digital endpoints to transfer data. That’s it. As simple as that sounds, it’s a lot more complex than meets the eye.

For example, how does one device or application respond to a request from a mobile device to add more french fries to your takeout order? There are wireless networks and protocols to communicate through and the Internet with gateways that require security “hand-shakes” entering and exiting one domain into another. How does it all work? You may have already guessed it, but if not…

It’s all of the coding that software engineers have been doing with a maniacal focus on connecting, building, and even monetizing APIs that supports this interconnectivity.

In order for software to thrive in this new digital universe, it must have, at the very least, an “open API” that allows other digital assets to interact with it. The authors of the software must expose something public and referenceable for other systems to connect to it while locking the proprietary portion that is licensed for sale. In other cases, “open source” software is used where all the code is exposed for developers to use and modify as they see fit. 

This interconnectivity is characterized as “extensibility”. Extensibility is the ability for an application to extend its reach, its value, its data to another system and, likewise, its ability to consume or integrate the value, data, or functionality from another system. The execs at 7-Eleven turned this digital extensibility switch on years ago with the adoption of handheld merchandising apps that track usage patterns and make sure each store has the most relevant supply of whatever is cherished the most in whatever community it serves. They’ve taken it one step further with the new delivery service, 7Now, that is in place for many locations. 

Considering today’s rapidly changing digital environments and all the apps that support the disruption occurring almost everywhere, static infrastructure is no longer a viable solution. Enterprises now realize that planning, sizing, installing, and maintaining all the compute power to support the software code that runs the business is a losing proposition. By the time everything is approved with the proper specs, the market has changed. The big conundrum, though, is balancing the existing investment in all of the infrastructure still on premises for many seasoned enterprises and the need for agility in the cloud. Public cloud offerings, like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud have made it easy to have compute power on demand so these disruptors can both build and pay as they go. The digital value that they create has a direct relation to its cost in real time. 

With a multitude of offerings for private and public cloud resources, disruptors can build just about any application and service delivery platform from just about anywhere to serve whatever need is out there. The big problem enterprises have today is that this disruption can go awry if not handled properly. 

Here’s a list of what happens when it goes wrong: 

To find out more about how to fix this, see our previous blog on Advancing a Cloud Control Strategy. 

A solid cloud management platform designed for complete cloud control will have extensibility to future and legacy technology so that the resulting provisioned infrastructure can be traced back to central control on one platform. A key element of today’s extensible platform is the ability to connect to APIs from any environment to include the technology in any upstream or downstream process. For example, CloudBolt’s enterprise customers often use ServiceNow for the system of record for all infrastructure and maintain it in a configuration management database (CMDB). The central platform must be able to update that record in the IT provisioning process. 

CloudBolt provides these three elements for a solid IT provisioning process and more. Request a demo today.