Shell Game
ITCS finds out about this nifty little program called SSH, which allows you to log into machines remotely with encryption, unlike Telnet, which they’d been using up to now. Way to stay on the bleeding edge of the mid-90’s.
In other science/technology news, the Daily refers to users of the Gemini telescope as “astrologists.” Watch for future stories about philosophizers and mathematicists.
I love it when clueless college reporters write articles about technology they know very little about.
posted by gyc on December 5th, 2003 at 7:38 pmI actually didn’t think the reporting was that bad. Some of the people they talked to were clueless, but at least the reporter made it clear that SSH doesn’t have anything to do with whether you can use Pine. Well, the article does refer to SSH as a “server.”
posted by ann arbor is overrated on December 5th, 2003 at 7:44 pmIs the ssh post a draw-out-the-geeks-test of some kind? Clever.
posted by Steven B. Cherry on December 5th, 2003 at 10:47 pmWell the reporter blows it with the very first sentence of the article: “Students who access their e-mail using Telnet will soon have a more secure inbox.” Umm… no they won’t, if they keep using telnet.
posted by gyc on December 5th, 2003 at 11:40 pmThis is new? I’ve been prompted to use SSH instead of Telnet to access my email for quite some time now
posted by Frank on December 6th, 2003 at 5:36 amHell, in my department, I’ve had telnet turned off for 3 years. I know that itcs has had ssh available for at least as long, it’s only now that they are making it mandatory. Only, windows doesn’t have a built-in ssh client, so you have to dl one.
Interestingly, the astrology reference in the original article that the letter posted was actually from an AP article that appeared in the Det News on Tuesday or Monday. So the author cobbled her article probably from that AP article and perhaps some local sources. What’s more embarrassing, to be clueless, or to copy other people’s work(not directly) with all of the improper terms still intact?
posted by Jeremy on December 6th, 2003 at 10:44 amIt does indeed draw nerds out from lurking.
SSH has been available on University computers for years. And somewhat more recently they’ve been advocating using SSH over telnet. Really, disabling it was a matter of waiting for the turnover of students who’ve been told to use telnet at orientation.
In any case, for years, the telnet connection provided did keep your password secure, just not the content.
posted by Stu on December 6th, 2003 at 11:15 amI still miss Pine, since my switch a year ago, but how can anyone still manage it? Don’t you still have to (s)ftp any attachments to the central ITS servers? Is it just where I am now that people have gotten totally attachment-dependent? I get (and send) like 50 attachments a day… (this is actually an earnest question, since I could switch back here, where we have a similar central server set-up, if I could figure out a better to cope with all the attachments — just saying to people, “please paste that into an email” isn’t flying anymore).
posted by Anna on December 6th, 2003 at 11:47 amAnna,
My approach was always to just ignore attachments. If people really wanted me to see things, they’d either be (a) plain text, (b) on a webserver, with url in the e-mail, or (c) on CVS. Just tell people that you never open attachments because you can’t be sure that they don’t contain viruses.
Now that I’m using a gui mail client (OSX Mail), I’m a little more forgiving, but I still only open attachments when I feel like it. Though, now that I’ve been working for (gack) local government rather than programming groups, assuming that everything important enough to look at will be on CVS isn’t a valid strategy. *sigh*.
posted by Murph on December 6th, 2003 at 12:26 pmI guess you could mount your home directory to your computer.
posted by gyc on December 6th, 2003 at 2:16 pmI have no idea what the hell you people are talking about.
posted by Brandon on December 6th, 2003 at 3:42 pmAnna,
I am a die-hard pine user who was forced to switch from telnet to ssh this year, since my new university won’t let you access pine through telnet anymore. However, it’s a lot easier to open attachments through pine in ssh than it was through telnet. Save attachments as usual on pine. Then, unlike telnet, there’s a little menu bar at the top of the ssh window. Click a button and your home directory pops right up in a separate window (just like ftp, but without the hassle of opening another program). Then just double-click the file you want. Takes just a couple of seconds.
posted by Joe F. on December 6th, 2003 at 5:11 pmAnother Pine die-hard checking in… I rarely get messages with attachments in the first place, and I mostly use PC-Pine these days, rather than using a copy on a remote server. (This wouldn’t have been my first choice, but, well, it’s a long story.)
With all of that said… Joe F., which SSH client are you using? I’ve been using PuTTY, which doesn’t seem to have that feature.
posted by Shmuel on December 6th, 2003 at 7:21 pmAll I have to say is that it’s about time the UM Astrology Department gets the recognition it deserves. Why should the anthropologicalizers and historicalists get all the good press in the Daily?
posted by Boris on December 6th, 2003 at 9:27 pmThanks all for the advice — I will have to look into either mounting my directory — PC-Pine not an option because I’m a linux and mac user (but haven’t made the switch yet to OSX, long story, but once I make the switch, maybe I’ll just try Mac’s).
As a side-note, Murph, I think you’ll find ignoring email to be an increasingly dangerous practice, esp. once your colleagues are on to your strategy. You’ll have messages from people like the Chair (”Welcome you to the Stupid Such and Such committee! The dept. appreciates your service. If for some reason you can’t participate, I’ll appreciate a response in 24 hours, otherwise, I will see you at the next meeting [see attachment for schedule]”).
posted by Anna on December 6th, 2003 at 10:54 pmI like PuTTY, too, but I’m almost always on a Linux or Sun machine. There, or on a Mac with OS X, none of the stuff about menus will apply.
The one thing about ITCS not requiring SSH before is that you could, if you were really desperate, telnet in to your ITCS account and then SSH to a machine that requires SSH, making a dubious end-run around that machine’s security requirements.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on December 6th, 2003 at 11:01 pmAnna, if you have the option, pine understands the IMAP protocol, so if the machine that hosts your mail has an IMAP server, you can run pine natively on your linux or Mac OS X box and have it open your mailbox remotely, just like Outlook or the Mac Mail software does. It’s how I read my mail at work (Theoretically, I’m required to have an Exchange account for Outlook, but I refuse to, so I run imap to pine instead.)
posted by Jeremy on December 6th, 2003 at 11:10 pmThanks for the advice, Jeremy.
AAOI — I’ve never even thought of that as dubious practice. Right after I got here, before I got my laptop, I would telnet from my bf’s PC to umich, and then ssh into my current U’s (Thanks ITS — ITCS?).
posted by Anna on December 6th, 2003 at 11:21 pmTotally off-topic, but AAOI, I just got back from hanging out with a few of my Ann Arbor ex-pat friends (er, ones who live here where I do now); gales of laughter over the Annarbour signs would be an accurate description. Thanks.
posted by Anna on December 6th, 2003 at 11:27 pmWell, not that I haven’t done it, but you are sending your password to the second machine in the clear.
The extra ‘u’ never gets old.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on December 7th, 2003 at 12:08 amNot to nerd the place up, but if you like Pine you might want to check out Mutt. Pine is to Mutt what Pico is to Vi. If you understood that last analogy, you’re probably a good candidate to check out Mutt. The Mutt website does the rest of the advocacy work for me.
As for attachments in Pine, I suggest running Pine on your local system, or keeping an SFTP client open. There’s no way that I know of to send a file directly to Pine, although there may be some zmodem or kermit hackery that I’m not aware of.
Also, if you’re on a windows system and need to get an SSH client in a hurry, head to Google, type in putty and click “I’m feeling lucky.”
posted by George on December 7th, 2003 at 1:02 pmYou can use SFTP now with the ITCS servers, just fine.
Check out Fugu, written at UMich, for Mac OS X. It’s free, and it much rocks muchly.
http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/fugu/
posted by bri.cors on December 8th, 2003 at 11:58 amShmuel,
What my U. is having us install is called “SSH Communications Window Client (Version 3.2.0, build revision 267, which includes support for pass-thru printing)”.
Info and download are here:
http://www.colorado.edu/its/docs/authenticate/win_ssh.html
Joe F.
posted by Joe F. on December 8th, 2003 at 12:45 pmAgainst ITCS’s advice, I’m running OpenAFS on my office machine so that my home directory on UMich’s AFS server maps as a local drive (or “mounts” as ITCS insists on saying).
Couldn’t be easier. (Unless Microsoft built SFTP and SSH into Win XP, as they might be expected to if they gave a flip about what users thought.)
posted by Dan on December 19th, 2003 at 4:38 pm