Connecting to pinky

This guide will walk you through the recommended steps to get set up for using the pinky server and for following shared use best practices.

1. request access

Write to Deren to request a username and password to be setup for you on pinky.

2. Create a GitHub account

If you don’t yet have one, create an account.

3. generate a public SSH key

On your laptop run the command below to generate a private and public key pair. This will request that you enter a passphrase, if you want you can just hit enter to leave the passphrase blank. This will generate two files placed in your ~/.ssh folder. The private key stays on your laptop and the public key will be sent to pinky so that the two files can be matched up when you try to connect.

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "deren@sacra"

4. upload your public SSH key to your GitHub account

Your public key can be shared publicly, and used for a variety of security purposes. To ensure that you do not lose it I recommend uploading it to your GitHub account. Follow the instructions here: https://jdblischak.github.io/2014-09-18-chicago/novice/git/05-sshkeys.html. Once your key is uploaded send Deren an email with your GitHub username and he will pull your public key onto pinky so that you will be able to login.

5. setup your laptop for easy ssh login

Next edit your SSH config file on your laptop to create a shortcut name to reference the pinky server. This makes it so that you do not need to write out the full IP address and username when you login. Replace the {username} with your own name in lower case (e.g., deren) without brackets.

# nickname the server pinky (ENTER YOUR USERNAME w/o brackets)
touch ~/.ssh/config
echo -e "
Host pinky
    Hostname 128.59.23.200
    User {username}
" > ~/.ssh/config

Finally, you can now login to pinky from your terminal by just typing:

ssh pinky