How to remotely (and securely) log onto SCE Linux Machines

    The School of Computing and Engineering maintains several open labs that students can use to do their homework, research, etc. We also maintain a number of Linux machines that are available for remote login. These are generally used for specific classes that do their assignments un a UNIX / Linux platform. Access to those machines is only available through an encrypted login (a secure shell) that encrypts all information that passes between the remote user and the Linux machine.
    To access these machines, you will need a secure shell client program, available for free from at least 2 sources:
  1. http://sce.umkc.edu/~cotterr/SSHSecureShellClient-3.2.9.exe
  2. http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
(I recommend the first, however both will work.  The department lab machines sre currently set up with PuTTY. Examples below will be based on PuTTY.)

    Once you have downloaded and installed the client, you are ready to remotely log into our machines. (If you are logging in from outside the UMKC network, you will also need the University VPN client software - available at: http://www.umkc.edu/is/support/services/VPN/. The VPN client must be installed and running before you open ssh.) When you open the PuTTY client, you will get a window similar to the one below:



    Enter in the Host name or IP address of the target machine. Be sure to select the SSH protocol. This will automatically update the Port to 22.:



    As shown above, enter in the domain name (or IP address) of the target machine. For CS431 students, the address is shown above (kc-sce-cs431.kc.umkc.edu). At this point you can save the configuration in the Saved Sessions field. That will make it easier to select this site the next time you want to log on.

If you then open the session, PuTTY will open a terminal window to the destination machine.

If this is the first time that you have logged onto this site, you will get a dialog box (shown below) that asks you to confirm that the public key being offered is correct. In this application, you may safely assume that the key is correct.



   Once you accept the public key, you will be asked to provide your UMKC SSO account and password. If your password is verified, you should then have a terminal window onto the remote machine.



By default, you will be logged onto your own personal directory ( of the form /home/xyzs8r ).  At this point you can execute Linux commands. You may be interested in customizing the screen (to change colors, change the size and shape of the font, etc. You may configure the session when you first start it up.




By changing the foreground and backgound colors and changing the font, your terminal can look much different.




Bob Cotter
Last updated 2/1/2013