Connect your Raspberry Pi remotely with the Secure Shell (SSH) protocol.

Learn how to connect your Raspberry Pi device securely and remotely using the SSH protocol, allowing you to access and control it from any networked computer or device. …


Updated October 3, 2023

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Learn how to connect your Raspberry Pi device securely and remotely using the SSH protocol, allowing you to access and control it from any networked computer or device.

SSH (Secure Shell) is a protocol that allows users to remotely access and manage their devices over the internet. It provides a secure method of communication between two machines by encrypting all data transferred between them. This is especially useful when you want to control your Raspberry Pi from another device, such as a computer or phone, without having to be physically connected to it via a display, keyboard, and mouse.

Requirements:

  • A Raspberry Pi with Raspbian (or any other SSH enabled OS) installed
  • The IP address of your Raspberry Pi device
  • An SSH client installed on the connecting device
    • On Windows, you can use PuTTY
    • On macOS and Linux, the built-in terminal supports SSH natively
  • A user account with SSH access on the Raspberry Pi device (default is ‘pi’ for Raspbian)
  • The password for the user account or a configured SSH key

Instructions:

  1. First, find the IP address of your Raspberry Pi device. You can do this by either checking your router’s administration page or running ifconfig on the command line interface of your Pi and noting the IPv4 address under wlan0 (for WiFi connection) or eth0 (for Ethernet connection).

  2. Open an SSH client on your connecting device. If using PuTTY on Windows, enter the IP address in the ‘Host Name’ field and click ‘Open’. If using the terminal on macOS/Linux, type ssh pi@<IP_ADDRESS> in the command line, replacing <IP_ADDRESS> with the actual IP address of your Pi.

  3. You will be prompted to enter the password for the user account you want to connect as (default is ‘pi’ on Raspbian). Enter the password and press ‘Enter’. If you have configured an SSH key, you won’t need to enter a password each time you connect.

  4. If this is your first time connecting to the Pi with SSH, you may be prompted to accept the server’s host key fingerprint. This is a security measure to ensure you are connecting to the correct device. Type ‘yes’ and press ‘Enter’ to continue.

  5. You should now have access to the command line interface of your Raspberry Pi device. You can run commands as if you were sitting at the device, such as ls to list files or sudo apt-get update to update software packages.

  6. When you are finished using the SSH session, type exit or press ‘Ctrl+D’ to close the connection and return to your local machine.

Tips:

  • You can specify a different user account by replacing ‘pi’ in the command/address with the desired username. For example, ssh myuser@<IP_ADDRESS> would connect as ‘myuser’.
  • If you are connecting from a Windows device without PuTTY, you can install an SSH client like OpenSSH or Git Bash to use the same commands as macOS/Linux users.
  • To avoid typing your password every time, set up SSH keys by following these instructions.
  • If you have trouble connecting, check that the Pi is connected to the internet, the SSH service is running (sudo systemctl status ssh), and your firewall settings allow incoming connections on port 22.

Remember, SSH provides a powerful way to remotely access and manage your Raspberry Pi device. With this knowledge, you can work from anywhere and control your Pi as if it were right in front of you!