SSH Mastery
by Michael W. Lucas · first published 2012
9mentions
4recommended by
8HN commenters
2014–2025first – last mentioned
50% recommend50% neutral
Secure Shell (SSH) lets sysadmins securely manage remote systems. It’s powerful, complicated, and confusing. Lose the confusion. SSH Mastery: OpenSSH, PuTTY, Tunnels and Keys rescues you from sifting through decades of obsolete online tutorials and quickly makes you an SSH journeyman. You’ll learn to: • eliminate passwords • manage access by users, groups, addresses, and more • securely move files around your network • forward graphic displays • proxy TCP connections • build SOCKS proxies • centrally manage and distribute keys and configurations • use SSH as secure transport fo
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…that this is from (2011), guess it's not an issue as this is a testimonial which is timeless. Michael writes many *BSD flavored books, but my favorite book that every OpenSSH user should have is his "SSH Mastery" book. http://www.amazon.com/SSH-Mastery-OpenSSH-PuTTY-Tunnels/dp/1...
on “My OpenBSD Story” ↗…handy as well. This is probably just enough to check HN, read email and SSH/ Mosh to somewhere to fix something when travelling or so. If you understand SSH (e.g. by reading the book by Michael W Lucas: SSH Mastery: https://mwl.io/nonfiction/tools#ssh) you will probably come up with your own tricks. I have written some of my tricks down in this OrgPage: https://www.orgpad.com/s/UHUor4 there are screenshots for Linux…
on “VPN over SSH? The Socks Proxy” ↗In my opinion, Michael W Lucas is one of the best tech writers working today. I have made great use of his books Absolute OpenBSD, SSH Mastery, and Httpd & Relayd Mastery. He also wrote Absolute FreeBSD and PGP & GPG: Email for the Practical Paranoid, among many others.
on “TLS Mastery” ↗I can recommend Mastering SSH - it's a nice, short read. http://www.amazon.com/SSH-Mastery-OpenSSH-PuTTY-Tunnels-eboo...
on “SSH Kung Fu ” ↗…https://mwl.io/nonfiction/tools#pam. It is readable and has a very specific sysadmin kind of humor I like. It certainly helped me to understand at least something. (His other books are also quite helpful, SSH Mastery, ZFS Mastery and others to name a few.)
on “The Surreal Horror of PAM (2021)” ↗…chacha20-poly1305@openssh.com KexAlgorithms curve25519-sha256@libssh.org AFAIK, if RSA is off the table, then the moduli file isn't necessary. RSAAuthentication no SFTP-only accounts are advised in "SSH Mastery" by Michael Lucas to follow this form: Match Group sftponly ChrootDirectory %h ForceCommand internal-sftp AllowTcpForwarding no I'm still seeing the external sftp subsystem in latest…
on “Simple SSH Security” ↗There is also Michael's "Sudo Mastery" book, and like his "SSH Mastery" book, it's full of useful lessons for just about anyone working with UNIX-based systems, including Linux and MacOS 10+. Earlier this month, Michael gave a talk based on the "Sudo Mastery" book, titled…
on “My OpenBSD Story” ↗…OpenBSD community. This, in short, is priceless. I have worked through Httpd and Relayd Mastery as well and I am eyeing up SNMP Mastery, Ed Mastery (I expect Michael to make me laugh a good few times), and SSH Mastery after I am done with OpenBSD Mastery: Filesystems and (not by Michael though) The book of PF. Keeping Michael fed seems like a great way to bring more BSD knowledge out there and hopefully keep an alternative…
on “Why “OpenBSD Mastery: Filesystems” Is Not in Amazon’s Kindle Store” ↗…that `Host` and `Match` are special and introduce new sections despite looking like other declarations. What is more likely is that you learned SSH config by studying the man page or reading a book like SSH Mastery and forgot the effort it took, and now you have "the curse of knowledge" about it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge), but you haven't studied the TOML spec the same way. A numeric "priority"…
on “CONL: "Markdown" for your config files” ↗