SSH Mastery: OpenSSH, PuTTY, Tunnels and Keys

by Michael W. Lucas

"One of the best technical writers in the networking and security environments." - Midwest Book Review

Secure Shell (SSH) lets sysadmins securely manage remote systems. It's powerful, complicated, and confusing.

Lose the confusion.

SSH Mastery rescues you from sifting through decades of obsolete online tutorials and quickly makes you an SSH journeyman. You'll learn to


eliminate passwords manage access by users, groups, addresses, and more securely move files around your network forward graphic displays proxy TCP connections build SOCKS proxies centrally manage and distribute keys and configurations use SSH as secure transport for other applications build virtual private networks create Certificate Authorities for truly large scale deployment Master Secure Shell with SSH Mastery!

Genres: Computer Science, Technology, Reference, Programming, Technical, Nonfiction, Computers

241 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Michael W. Lucas is the author of several critically-acclaimed nonfiction books and assorted short fiction. He was on the Internet before the Web existed, and now works for an independent telecommunications wholesaler in Michigan.

Reviews

[Scott Muc · Rating 4 out of 5]

The name of the book is a bit misleading but it doesn't detract from the quality. The book sticks to its focus on SSH and leaves any other tooling and automation up to the imagination of the reader. I believe this is the books strength. It stays focused on SSH and that keeps the book nice and lean.

Concepts from the book came up a couple times during work which makes the book a valuable resource already. I already felt quite competent with SSH before reading this book, but I definitely feel like I got tested a bit on my knowledge which is exactly what I wanted to get from it.

The writing style of Michael Lucas is pleasantly casual. The chapters read more like blog posts which is a style I like. It's also nice to have a comprehensive SSH guide with a consistent style. I would rather go to this book for SSH information than a search engine where the results will be inconsistent.

This was my first introduction to Lucas' writing and I think I'll get some of his other IT mastery books now.

[Srinivasan Nanduri · Rating 4 out of 5]

The material and breadth covered here is all relevant. The ebook needs better formatting, at-least some diagrams would have made this an unbeatable read on the topic.

[Martin Krauskopf · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading the book and liked easy-to-read, enjoyable, here and there funny style of writing, and I'm satisfied with the investment. I've found a lot of useful information - being myself rather "advanced beginner" user.

I would say that after reading the book, one will become a proficient user of the SSH tooling - not a master. The book seems to be rather targeted for beginners-to-intermediate SSH users. To understand the SSH protocol itself or to get more background on the theory behind key types, and similar advanced topics, one has to look for another book or source of information.

I would recommend this book as a great introduction into SSH or probably as a nice refresher for intermediate users who want enjoy some easy reading during their travels.

[James Tomasino · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did not retain half of what I need to retain from this book. The good news is I can refer back and I have some immediate action items.

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love a good focused book that doesn't dilly dally and Lucas does just that. As someone who uses SSH all the time but never _really_ understood some of the core ideas, this was an easy to read guide to being much more confident in my SSH users.

I'll be completely honest and say that I never understood what host keys were, but I'm much more confident now.

[MBybee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book, I think it's focused heavily on people new to SSH (or I hope so), but the information is fairly thorough and well laid out.

[rixx · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written as usual. Teaches both implicit cultural knowledge and exciting obscure details in a structured, concise, and comprehensive way.

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review at https://stuff.graves.cl/posts/2024-07...

[Karol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I'm using SSH for over a decade already, I never came around to actually tackle the topic more systematically in form of a book. To my surprise the book didn't contain anything completely new to me, so it basically was just a good summary of what can be done with SSH and in what way it should be configured. It definitely was worthwhile, although the author deliberately does not cover all options. It's more of a book about using SSH than it is actually about SSH in all its glory details itself. So you probably want also take a look at the appropriate man pages every now and then. Nevertheless its probably exactly what beginners need in order to get started in a secure fashion.

[Rohit Gupta · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book Which is all about ssh, key pairs, port forwarding and securing your server. It covers both openSSH and Putty in detail. The scenarios in book are taken from real world experiences and The humour in the book is refreshing.

I was looking for more n Putty in this book so was left demanding for more but i reckon i made a bad choice in picking up the wrong book. Very well written book though. Made me realise some features and functionality of SSH as a protocol which i did not know before.

[Dave Peticolas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very useful introduction to OpenSSH and the many cool things it can do.

[Guillermo García Rojas C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro básico y que siempre debe estar cerca para referencia rápida.

[Filip Pettersson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good summary on what I already knew with lots of useful opinions on best practices from experts.