I think I need a Primer

[greyflank]

Been off in my own world for a little bit and now trying to get back into things.
I think I've forgotten how to work the FTP.  Or maybe I'm poking at the wrong port?
Can someone give me a quickie overview?  My site is very much overdue for an update!

[Databits]

I still suggest everyone learn how to use SCP for things such as this. I wrote a detailed tutorial on it in this thread: http://xepher.net/forum/viewtopic.php?id=31

[Xepher]

FTP should be the default port, which is 21. If, however, you enter the wrong password several times in a row, it'll block you from that port for a day or more. This prevents brute-force attacks.

That said, I agree with Data... Use SCP if at all possible.

Oh, and welcome back Grey!

[Databits]

One little thing, just so people know, there is a way to generate an RSA key and upload it to your user folder (I've run across hosts that this doesn't work for) so you can have it "auto-login" on your machine (just like many FTP clients), but retain security of SCP.

I know that the SSH client I've linked can do this, as well as Putty. But Putty doesn't have a nice little SCP UI built into it for easy "drag and drop" file transfers.

If I have the time to figure out how (or if) this works on Xepher.net, I'll post it as an addon to that previous tutorial (which I probably could rewrite in PDF format).

[Xepher]

A) Yes, private keys work. I use them all the time for my own accounts. They're actually more secure than passwords, as they can't be guessed... provided, of course, that no one actually steals data from your personal PC. Basically, you have to have some program generate the key pair. Most of them will make a ".key" file and a ".pub" file. The .pub is the public key, the one that goes on the server. The other one is private and should NEVER go to anyone but you. Basically you have to copy the public key to the server... it goes the in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file. One key per line. If you've only got one (which is the norm) you can just copy the .pub file to that location. (Meaning it would be renamed "authorized_keys" and placed in the .ssh directory inside your home directory.

B) Tutorial? Awesome... PDF? WTF? Why would you make something so useful into a format so kludgy? HTML works just fine! :-)

[Databits]

Right right... I didn't think about writing it into an HTML format. Haha


Ok so that'd actually make it a LOT easier to do. Then I wouldn't need to print it to a PDF in hopes that things work out and display correctly (Although PDF is the most widely used document format used for online government documents, so there's gotta be some leeway for it).

[dragyn]

School here ends in a couple weeks.  I'll figure out what you two were discussing then.