Accessibility statement

SSH service

Related pages

When you are working away from campus, you can't normally connect to most UNIX or Linux computers located on campus.

The SSH service provides a gateway you can login to, and then connect onwards to the computer on campus you need to reach.

Overview

Eligibility

All students and staff can access this service if they need to log in to on campus computers while working off campus.

Duo two-factor authentication is required to log in.

As well as being a gateway to the campus, the SSH service also enables you to set up port forwarding to tunnel other protocols through it so you can use them to connect to your destination computer.

The SSH service provides an alternative to the VPN service.

How to connect

This service is available to all members of the University. Upon successfully connecting to ssh.york.ac.uk, you will be prompted to enter the hostname of the machine you wish to reach.

You may need to download SSH software for your computer to allow you to connect.

There are many such applications available for both desktop, laptop and mobile devices:

  • Windows: download PuTTY, an open source SSH and telnet client
  • Mac OS: the "ssh" command is built in to the Terminal application, or other applications can be downloaded and installed
  • Linux: the "ssh" command built in, or other applications can be downloaded and installed
  • Mobile devices: Search your device's app store for "ssh"

When connecting to the SSH service (or others that require interactive authentication such as those that require Duo two-factor authentication) it is possible to create a single master session (where the authorisation takes place) and have subsequent sessions not require re-authentication. 

Help and troubleshooting

Library and IT Help Desk

If you're having problems connecting using the SSH service, get in touch with the Library and IT Help Desk.

Our commitments

Service status Live and supported service.
Hours of service 24/7
Service support For help and support with this service, contact the Library and IT Help Desk.
Hours of support Help from the Library & IT Help Desk is available 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday.
Target availability

General IT Services targets:

  • Information Services Service Standards
Resilience This service runs on our high-availability virtual machine platform. In the event of a major incident it will automatically failover between data centres, with only a brief outage. Filestores are replicated between data centres and should also fail over automatically.
Our performance

Our service standards have been produced in consultation with our customers, and monitor the quality, timeliness and access to facilities and services:

  • Information Services Service Standards

Complaints procedure

If you wish to give us general feedback on this service, please see our Feedback page for ways to get in touch.

If you wish to make a complaint, please see our complaints procedure.

Your responsibilities

We expect you:

  • to take extra care to keep your password safe and account secure because of the additional access rights granted to you.