SSH

From OCF Help

Secure Shell or SSH allows you to securely connect to your shell account on the OCF or other remote systems. Secure File Transfer or SFTP allows you to securely upload/download files to/from your OCF account or other remote systems.

To transfer files to your OCF account, users can visit our computer laboratory and transfer files using a floppy disk, writable CD, or USB drive, or transfer files remotely by following the instructions on this page.

SSH/SFTP settings

To connect to an OCF login server using SSH or SFTP, use the following settings:

Host: ocf.berkeley.edu
Port: 22
Username: <your OCF account name>
Password: <your OCF account password>

For more detailed information, see the platform-specific instructions below.

List of machines

In addition to the login servers, you may directly connect to any OCF system that allows general logins, using machine.ocf.berkeley.edu as the hostname, where machine is one of the names listed below:

NOTE: See SSH host keys for the host keys for these machines.

Login servers

conquest
apocalypse
tsunami

Solaris machines

conquest
apocalypse
asteroid

GNU/Linux machines

tsunami
armageddon
avalanche
bigbang
cyclone
fallingrocks
hailstorm
pileup
tornado
madcow
biohazard

Platform-specific instructions

SSH clients are available for all the common platforms, and if you need SSH access from a public workstation where you cannot install new programs, you can use the Java applet client available at http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/ssh/. (Note: We do not recommend using the Java applet client unless absolutely no other options are available.)

Microsoft Windows

The previous recommended client for Microsoft Windows is SSH Secure Shell. SSH Secure Shell provides both SSH and SFTP clients and was free to registered students (see the link above for more info).

See SSH Secure Shell for detailed instructions on how to use SSH Secure Shell to connect your OCF shell account.
See SSH Secure File Transfer for detailed instructions on how to use SSH Secure File Transfer to transfer files to your OCF account.

Since the campus has stopped actively distributing these clients, we have included instructions for the more popular alternatives. We recommend PuTTY (downloadable here) as a Secure Shell client and WinSCP (downloadable here) as a Secure File Transfer client.

See PuTTY for detailed instructions on how to use PuTTY to connect your OCF shell account.
See WinSCP for detailed instructions on how to use WinSCP to transfer files to your OCF account.

Other popular clients:

Apple Macintosh

Mac OS X

Mac OS X comes with its own shell program (called Terminal) and SSH client, so no downloads are necessary. The generally recommended SFTP client for OS X is Cyberduck, which is free to download here.

See OS X Terminal for detailed instructions on how to use the OS X Terminal to access your OCF shell account.
See Fugu for detailed instructions on how to use Fugu to transfer files to your OCF account.
See Cyberduck for detailed instructions on how to use Cyberduck to transfer files to your OCF account.

Mac OS 9

Please download MacSSH and MacSFTP from macssh.com.

Unix and Unix-like Systems

SSH is generally available from the command line on Unix or Unix-like system as ssh or openssh. Since there are so many different distributions and desktop environments available, its impossible to give instructions for all of them. At the same time, it is somewhat assumed that if you are using Unix or Unix-like systems, you are ready to figure stuff out on your own. As a compromise, we provide instructions for the two most common desktop environments: GNOME and KDE.

GNOME

See GNOME Terminal for detailed instructions on how to use the GNOME Terminal to access your OCF shell account.
See Nautilus for detailed instructions on how to use GNOME's Nautilus to transfer files to your OCF account.

KDE

See Konsole for detailed instructions on how to use the Konsole to access your OCF shell account.
See Konqueror for detailed instructions on how to use KDE's Konqueror to transfer files to your OCF account.

Troubleshooting SFTP

FTP client cannot connect

FTP is no longer supported due to security concerns. Refer to this page for full details.

SFTP client cannot transfer files, or transfers them only partially

First, you should check whether you can connect to OCF servers at all. Try using SSH to login with your username and password. If this does not work, then the problem is most often that you are behind a mis-configured router or firewall. A number of users have reported that updating the firmware in their routers has ended their troubles, so one of the first things may be to check if there's an update available for yours.

If the problem is not with the modem/router, then you probably are behind a firewall that is blocking connections to our server. If you are connecting from a corporate network, this is especially likely. For home users, the firewall could be in your cable/DSL router, or in firewall software you have installed on your computer. Since this involves software or hardware on your side, the OCF staff, unfortunately, can only offer rather limited assistance. You'll just have to fiddle with the settings, especially with ones mentioning "trusted site", "allow connections to", or something along those lines.

If you can connect to OCF via SSH, then you should check your quota to see if the files are transferring partially due to your being over quota. Please see our quota documentation for information about how to check your quota.

SFTP client cannot connect, but other services, such as webmail, works

This could happen if your cred entries are out of sync. This problem can be fixed by changing password; however, you may need to know your "current" password (that is, the password our Unix system thinks is current), which is probably different from your current webmail password. Alternatively, you can drop by the OCF Lab when a staff is around to reset the password.

SSH