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As many web developers can attest to, logging into your server through SSH (Secure Shell) is one of the more common day-to-day tasks (you can even use it as a secure tunnel for your traffic). It only makes sense to automate this process which in turn can save many many keystrokes.

This how-to is written with PuTTY and Windows in mind and requires several other tools that are available from PuTTY’s website. So from their download page, make sure you have these files:

• PuTTY (putty.exe)
• PuTTYgen (puttygen.exe)

Then to automate SSH login, do the following:

1. Run PuTTYgen.
2. Select SSH-2 DSA as the Type of Key to generate.
3. Click generate and move your mouse around to generate randomness.
4. Click “Save Private Key” and save it somewhere on your computer.
5. Copy the entire content inside the box to your clipboard (this is your generated public key).
6. Login to your SSH server.
7. Create the file ~/.ssh/authorized_keys containing the generated public key (from step 3) on a single line.
8. Make this file readable (chmod 755).
9. Then open up PuTTY and navigate to Connection->Data and fill in the auto-login username.
10. Navigate to Connection->SSH->Auth and under Private-key, browse to the file you had saved earlier on your computer.

That’s it! Now you can try logging in to your SSH server and it should login automatically. If it works, make sure you save your session so you don’t have to repeat these steps every time!

Hopefully these steps work for everyone! Let me know if there are any problems.

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Using Wi-fi in public hotspots can be dangerous when packet sniffers are readily available. You’d want to encrypt and protect what you are sending and receiving over the network. Even at home if you don’t want people on the network logging your activity (for whatever reason) you would want to encrypt your traffic. An excellent way to do this is to set up a proxy over an SSH connection. You will need the following to do this (works for any platform):

• PuTTY for your platform (I use v0.59)
• A server that supports SSH (either set up at home or your web host)

That’s it! First set up PuTTY to connect to your SSH server but also set the following Tunnel settings:

• Source Port: 7070 (this number can be pretty much anything)
• Destination: localhost
• Select Dynamic and Auto

Then click Add and it should show up as D7070. Select Open and log-in. Your traffic can now be forwarded once you configure your applications to use the proxy.

In Firefox (2.x), go to Tools->Options->Advanced->Network->Settings and set the following proxy configuration:

• Manual proxy config
• SOCKS Host: localhost
• Port: 7070
• SOCKSv5 (or v4, doesn’t matter)

Then hit OK and you’re done. To make sure the proxy is working, you can go to a site that will display your IP address or location. You can also encrypt your BitTorrent traffic or your MSN connection by changing connection/proxy settings to point to localhost port 7070 using either SOCKS v4 or v5.

An easy way to switch proxy settings in Firefox is to install the Switchproxy add-on — change proxy settings with just a click. Enjoy your secure browser session!

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