SSH (the secure shell) is an encrypted protocol that runs on port 22. In this day and age, it probably is (and should be) just about the only way to gain remote access to a host.

Here are my notes on topics that have arisen in my use of ssh:

Troubleshooting

For troubleshooting, you can run a sshd server on a different port right alongside the usual server on port 22 via: 
/usr/sbin/sshd -d -p 2222
Do this in a terminal window so you can watch the debug, then connect to it via: 
ssh -p 2222 host

Broken pipes

On some systems I connect to, I see inactive connections get dropped after a few minutes. This can be remedied by putting the following in the client side ~/.ssh/config file: 
ServerAliveInterval 600

Documentation

Note that SSH (which is OpenSSH on the systems I use) has unusually comprehensive online man pages: 

man ssh
man 5 ssh_config
Feedback? Questions? Drop me a line!

Adventures in computing / tom@mmto.org