Setup SSH from chromebook to home desktop
=========================================

I write many of these posts from a 10 year old desktop that sits in my office these days. It does a very fine job running all of the things I need it to for...

Date: March 8, 2022

I write many of these posts from a 10 year old desktop that sits in my
office these days. It does a very fine job running all of the things I
need it to for my side work, but sometimes I want a mobile setup. I
don't really want to spend the $$ on a new laptop just for the few times
I want to be somewhere else in the house. What I do have though is a
chromebook.

I've tried to get the chromebook into my workflow in the past, but have
failed. Much because by the time I got all of my tools up and running
in the linux vm it was taking up quite a bit of space on the device and
made it harder for others to use as a chromebook.

Today I am giving it a second try, but this time with ssh.

## Checking for existing sshd

Before doing anything I checked to see if sshd is already running. Using
the following command.

``` bash
sudo service ssh status
# or
pgrep -l sshd
```

Both returned nothing so I know that its not running.

## setting up sshd

_just apt install it_

Next install the openssh-client and openssh-server

``` bash
sudo apt install openssh-client -y
sudo apt install openssh-server -y
```

After this I can see that its now running by checking its status once
again.

``` bash
sudo service ssh status
```

Gives me the result.

``` bash
● ssh.service - OpenBSD Secure Shell server
 Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/ssh.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
 Active: active (running) since Tue 2022-03-08 08:17:05 CST; 12min ago
 Docs: man:sshd(8)
 man:sshd_config(5)
 Process: 181185 ExecStartPre=/usr/sbin/sshd -t (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 181189 (sshd)
 Tasks: 1 (limit: 19119)
 Memory: 2.8M
 CPU: 96ms
 CGroup: /system.slice/ssh.service
 └─181189 sshd: /usr/sbin/sshd -D [listener] 0 of 10-100 startups
```

## Accessing the desktop

I have already enabled the Linux terminal on my chromebook, so I just
opened the terminal, and ran the following.

``` bash
ssh @
```

It prompted for my password and I was in. I had all of my vim, tmux,
and zsh comforts that I enjoy without installing anything. It worked so
well that this whole post was written from my chromebook.

## Limitations

This does limit me to being on the same network as my desktop, which
these days is almost always true.

## ssh keys

Out of the box I am just using passwords to get in, but if this were
public I would lock down to requiring an ssh key to enter. I'll likey
do this in a future post.