In this lesson you will learn how to remote control your Raspberry Pi over your local network using Secure Shell (SSH).
A common reason for remote controlling your Pi from another computer is that you may be using your Pi solely to control some electronics and therefore not need a keyboard, mouse and monitor, other than for setting it up.
It also can just save on desktop clutter, and the problem of having multiple keyboards and mice all over the place.
Enabling SSH SIMON MONK
Secure Shell (SSH) is a feature of Linux that allows you to effectively open a terminal session on your Raspberry Pi from the command line of your host computer.
Recent versions of Rasbpian enable SSH access by default. On older installations, you can use Raspi Config, which you first saw back in Lesson 2.
In order to do this, open LX Terminal on your Pi and enter the following command to start Raspi Config:
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Scroll down to the “ssh” option.
Hit the Enter and then select “Enable”
A script will run and then you will see the following as confirmation:
Using SSH on a Mac or Linux SIMON MONK
Now switch over to using the computer from which you wish to control the Pi.
If you are using a Mac or Linux PC then open a Terminal. On the Mac, you can find this in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.
Enter the following command into the Terminal window.
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Note that you will need to replace the IP address above with that of your Pi. You can find this by running the command “sudo ifconfig” from the Terminal.
The option “-l pi' specifies that we want to log into the Pi as the user “pi”. The first time you run the command, you will get a security warning about not being able to verify the identity of the machine, say that you want to continue and enter your password (“raspberry” by default) when prompted.
You will notice that the command prompt will change to indicate that you are now connected to your Pi. Try using the “ls” command to show the contents of the current folder on the Pi.
SSH under Windows SIMON MONK
If you use windows, then you will need to download a free program called “PuTTY” from here:http://www.putty.org/.
Having downloaded and installed PuTTY (it's a single file called putty.exe), run the program.
Enter the IP address that you found earlier and click “Open”. This will give you a warning (the first time) and then prompt you for the user (“pi”) and password (“raspberry”).
The ssh window will then be ready for use.
For a good example of how to use ssh to remotely configure a raspberry Pi, take a look at this tutorial:
http://learn.adafruit.com/raspberry-pi-e-mail-notifier-using-leds/overview
Test & Configure SIMON MONK
Try exploring your files system by using 'ls' to list the files in the current directory and 'cd' followed by a directory name to change the current directory.
You can edit files using 'nano' followed by the file name and also install software using the 'apt-get' command, as described in some of the earlier tutorials in this series.
When finished with your ssh session, close the client application/window or simply type in exit into the shell window.
Troubleshooting
If you encounter a connection reset by peer error when trying to connect to your Pi, there could be a problem with the SSH keys. You can 'reset' the keys with the following commands.
First, remove the old keys:sudo rm /etc/ssh/ssh_host_*
Then regenerate them
sudo dpkg-reconfigure openssh-server
Then try again!