Ubuntu – Connecting to a server via the command line

14.04command linenetworkingssh

Newbie networking question here…

So, I have followed some instructions from my university to connect to my personal space on the university network. The instructions are to open Nautilus, then under Network on the left-side panel, choose Connect to Server, where I then enter smb://foo.bar.com/user into Server Address, where foo.bar.com is the address of the network, and user is my username.

This works fine, and I can then browse my personal space. However, I want to do some more complicated things than simply browsing, such as changing the permissions of various files. And I would like to be able to do this from the command line as I have been used to in the past.

So, what I tried to do is to ssh into this network. I'm not really sure whether ssh is the right thing to be doing here, and what it really does anyway, but I had heard that this is the way to connect to servers through the command line. So, in the command line, I tried entering ssh foo.bar.com, which then asked me for my password. But after entering my password, I got a message saying:

Connection closed by xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx,

where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is an IP address which I have determined is the exact IP address of the server I am trying to connect to. This message appears even after I have closed my other connection to this server from Nautilus.

So, this may be an internal issue with my university which I need to resolve, but before I do that, is this the correct way I should be trying to access the server from the command line? Or is there another way which is more typical and might work for me?

Thanks!

Best Answer

While ssh is not the same as Samba, and therefore it was likely that you failed, you can do a cifs-mount for a Samba-shared directory:

create a folder in your (Johnny's) home dir e.g. mkdir univerity_space
then connect via

sudo /bin/mount -t cifs -o user=UNIVERSITY_USERNAME,uid=1000,gid=1000 //foo.bar.com/user /home/johnny_johnson/university_space

check that your local (Ubuntu) user ID and group ID is 1000 via echo $UID (that is under which username and group the folder permissions are to be set on your Ubunut machine, i.e. it should be Johnny's in the end). It might be another number, just take that then.
you will be prompted for the password
disconnect via sudo /bin/umount /home/johnny_johnson/university_space

Note that the permissions you are setting now are permissions in terms of your local Ubuntu machine. See for @madneon's answer on the differences of ssh and Samba.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to enter the Default Keyring password via the command line

Thanks to python-gnomekeyring, this is relatively easy:

python -c "import gnomekeyring;gnomekeyring.unlock_sync(None, 'my password');"

Or as a proper script:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import gnomekeyring
gnomekeyring.unlock_sync(None, 'my password');

I think you don't need to install the package. But it can't hurt to try.

Keep in mind that storing your password on your hard disk is an immense security risk. You should be using this instead:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import gnomekeyring
import getpass

gnomekeyring.unlock_sync(None, getpass.getpass('Password: '));

You can save this script, for example, as unlock-keyring.py and then do the following:

sudo mv unlock-keyring.py /usr/bin/unlock-keyring
sudo chmod a+x /usr/bin/unlock-keyring

From then, you can always just type unlock-keyring and be prompted for a password. Don't do this with the version that contains your password.

You can replace None with the name of your keyring, e.g. 'session', if you want to unlock one that isn't the default.

I'm having a hard time testing this properly, so please let me know if it doesn't work and I'll take a look at it right away. Also let me know if it does work :-)

Ubuntu – Connecting to wireless networks from command line

I'm assuming you're using Ubuntu Desktop as you didn't specify otherwise.

You can create a wireless network configuration that will be managed by Network Manager by creating files in /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections. Look at existing files to see how the format looks like.

Once the connection is created, you can use the nmcli command to manage NetworkManager from the command line, doing things such as enabling, disabling and querying connections.

Incidentally, the System Testing tool (checkbox) has a script that does exactly this: creates a connection and enables it, with parameters that you supply on the command line.

For instance, this creates a connection to the open "duck" network:

sudo /usr/share/checkbox/scripts/create_connection duck

This will create a connection to a network using WPA2 security, with "wings" password:

sudo /usr/share/checkbox/scripts/create_connection -S wpa -K wings duck

The script is written in Python so it should be easy for you to look at and adapt to your needs.

The script's help says this:

Usage: create_connection [options] SSID

Options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -S SECURITY, --security=SECURITY
                        The type of security to be used by the connection.
                        One of wpa and wep. No security will be used if
                        nothing is specified.
  -K KEY, --key=KEY     The encryption key required by the router.
  -U UUID, --uuid=UUID  The uuid to assign to the connection for use by
                        NetworkManager. One will be generated if not
                        specified here.
  -R RETRIES, --retries=RETRIES
                        The number of times to attempt bringing up the
                        connection until it is confirmed as active.
  -I INTERVAL, --interval=INTERVAL
                        The time to wait between attempts to detect the
                        registration of the connection.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to enter the Default Keyring password via the command line

Ubuntu – Connecting to wireless networks from command line

Related Question