I ran into some issues connecting to a remote server using ssh. I then had a similar issue at work and decided that today was the day I would finally tackle this bully called ssh. I loaded up a bunch of videos got some great articles and took a ton of notes. Event with that these bugs and system processes had me ripping my hair out. I am way better in the terminal than before but I still have a long way to go.

Thankfully I was able to get everything working in the final minutes before I quit. I spent a good 5 hours obsessed over this topic and I am now super sleepy and still have to work today. Anyways I was able to setup my ssh private keys so that I have a config file that allows me to keep them all clean and organized. I also learned how to cache the keys in my ssh-agent so that I don’t need to repeatedly enter passphrases upon each connection in the same session. I still haven’t figured out how to get ssh-agent running automatically without bugs when I open my terminal. I still have a long way to go but it’s some progress for the hairs I have lost LOL.

The best part is that I did not know that I could use ssh to connect to my virtual machines. I have always had issues sharing files with my local virtual machines and now I may very well be able to solve this problem. I can’t wait to try this out next weekend. If this works I cant try to spend some time every week working purely in a Linux environment to help me transition. I also get to practice setting up servers that I have full permissions on. This is getting exciting! Tomorrow I am back to Node.js though. I had to address this problem once and for all. I made some progress but this is definitely not the end of me and ssh.

TLDR;

Okay, so here are the highlights of what I did:

• Shell Scripting -> Studying how ssh works and how to use OpenSSH to configure and connect to multiple remote servers without having to manually enter all the details every single time. This took up a tremendous amount of time but I feel a lot more confident using ssh and setting things up on a server to deal with permissions. It’s a process but I think today was a great step forward.

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Current Link list for learning SSH

There is a lot more coming but if you want to travel down this road with me, here is what I have gone through so far.

• The Beginner’s Guide to SSH – YouTube video
• SSH Crash Course | With Some DevOps – YouTube video – Brad Traversy
• BSD Project – related to BSD Servers
• Daemon Program – Wikipedia
• How does public key encryption work
• How Secure Shell (ssh) keys work
• ssh config files
• How to set up ssh keys – Digital Ocean
• SSH Commands Cheatsheet – Brad Traversy – Github
• OpenSSH Full Guide – Indepth YouTube Video
• Adding comments in ssh keys
• Avoiding adding the passphrase all the time. I’m still having issues so I looked this up. May help in the future when I revisit this.

Debugging Freak outs. I still can’t get my Pass Phrases cached. Something is wrong with how my ssh-agent is running I think.

Update: I finally got ssh-agent working to cache my passphrases but I don’t know how I fixed it. The reproduction produce now begins.

• openssh hangs at “rekey after 134217728 blocks”
• Identity file type 0 – ssh logs
• “ssh localhost” not working without entering login password on Mac
• Why am I still getting a password prompt with ssh with public key authentication?
• How to list keys added to ssh-agent with ssh-add?
• How to avoid being asked passphrase each time I push to Bitbucket
• How to kill a process from the terminal
• What does eval do
• ssh-add adding an arbitrary key to the ssh-agent

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Goal For Round 8 of the #100DaysofCode Challenge

This is my eighth round of the “#100daysofcode” challenge. I will be continuing my work from round five, six, and seven into round eight. I was working through the book “Cracking the Coding Interview” by Gayle Laakmann McDowell. My goal was to become more familiar with algorithms and data structures. This goal was derived from my goal to better understand operating systems and key programs that I use in the terminal regularly e.g. Git. This goal was in turn derived from my desire to better understand the fundamental tools used for coding outside of popular GUIs. This in turn was derived from my desire to be a better back-end developer.

I am currently putting a pause on the algorithm work to build some backend/full stack projects. I primarily want to improve my skills with the back-end from an implementation perspective. I have improved tremendously in terminal and CLI skills but I lost focus due to how abstract the algorithm concepts got. I wanted to work on things that were more tangible until I can get to a position where I could directly benefit from improving my algorithm skills and theoretical knowledge. So that’s the focus right now. Build my backend skills and prove my full stack capabilities by building some dope projects.

Again, I still have no idea if my path is correct but I am walking down this road anyways. Worst case scenario I learn a whole bunch of stuff that will help me out on my own personal projects. Best case scenario I actually become one of those unicorn developers that go on to start a billion dollar company… You never know LOL.