Enabling and Configuring SSH and other services on Ubuntu Linux
The SSH daemon i.e. sshd didn't come pre-installed in my Ubuntu Linux 8.10 distribution. As a result, I could not SSH into my machine from another terminal. Therefore, I had to install and configure it as per the following steps:
Install SSH with apt-get
sudo apt-get install ssh
The service can be started using the init scipts as below:
sudo /etc/init.d/vsftpd <start | stop >
and the
sudo /etc/init.d/ssh <start | stop >
However, it is more convenient to use the Run-level configuration tool for init scripts (sysv-rc-conf). You can control the background services and enable/disable the start of various applications at different run levels by clicking a bunch of check-boxes on a single page. This could bring down your OS boot up time as well by disabling unnecessary services that aren't used frequently (printers, rsync, bluetooth, etc).
Install the sysv-rc-conf tool
sudo apt-get install sysv-rc-conf
Run the application
sudo sysv-rc-conf
The SSH service can be configured by modifying the check boxes associated with it accordingly. Similarly, you can identify and configure additional unneeded services. Please note the initial default values for any service that you may opt to change. Also, in order to completely disable a particular service, you will need to remove all the Xs appearing for that service across differnt run levels.
