To access your linux box from a remote box, you'll want to install ssh. This is one of the first things you'll want to do because it enables you to access the machine from your windows desktop (using PuTTY) just as if you were sitting at the linux console. Why is this better? Well...

• You can park the linux box in a closet/lab somewhere and save space (and reduce noise) in your workplace.
• You can cut and paste to/from your windows machine (e.g. to easily capture and send an error message via email)
• Lots of times, the answer to your problem will come from the web. This way, you can access the web and your linux installation from one machine.
• You can launch a bunch of PuTTY windows at once, which is handy for things like showing a log file in one window while running the program generating the log data in another.

Note, the last two things can be accomplished by running a GUI (Gnome, KDE, etc.) and setting up the web browser.

Installing the linux part

First, check to see if it's already installed. If you installed RedHat with the 'server' option it should be there. From a shell, type ssh localhost. If it hangs and does nothing, you need to install it. If it comes back asking you to accept a key and type a password, you're in business and can skip to the PuTTY installation step.

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-- MattWalsh - 17 Oct 2002