How to Configure Mac OS X Terminal for Secure SSH

For help or if you have questions or problems, please contact the Solution Center, 192 Parks Library, solution@iastate.edu or call IT Services at 294–4000.

The following information applies only to Mac OS X 10.2 to Mac OS X 10.4.

Terminal

SSH is used from the Terminal (/Applications/Utilities) command line.

Before using SSH, you may need to change the following Terminal Preference.

• Open the Terminal application

• Select Terminal -> Preferences…

• Change the following:

  Declare terminal type ($TERM) as: vt102

• Close the “Terminal Preferences” window.

• Select Terminal -> Window Settings… to make other window setting changes. Click the “Use Settings as Defaults” button to use the current window settings in all new Terminal windows.

Secure SSH

Open the Terminal application and type following ssh command:

ssh *fqdn*

where fqdn is the domain name of the machine that you are SSH’ing too.

.term Files

The Terminal application can save current Window Settings to a .term file. .term files are actually .plist files, but with a .term file extention instead. Later, when you double-click on the .term file, the Terminal application will start and the Window Settings in the .term file will be used.

You can also cause the Terminal application to execute commands when you double-click on a .term file. For example, by adding the following text:

<key>ExecutionString</key>
<string>ssh isua.iastate.edu;exit</string>

you can cause the Terminal application to automatically ssh to isua.iastate.edu when you double-click on the saved .term file.