How to Install or Update OpenSSH Server in CentOS, RHEL and Fedora

OpenSSH is a free tool widely used for remote login or remote file transfer. It uses SSH/SecSH protocol suite providing encryption for network services. Its source code is available free to everyone. This article will help you to Install or Update OpenSSH Server in CentOS, RHEL, and Fedora systems.

Features of OpenSSH

• Open Source Project
• Free Licensing
• Strong Encryption (3DES, Blowfish, AES, Arcfour)
• X11 Forwarding (encrypt X Window System traffic)
• Port Forwarding (encrypted channels for legacy protocols)
• Strong Authentication (Public Key, One-Time Password and Kerberos Authentication)
• Agent Forwarding (Single-Sign-On)
• Interoperability (Compliance with SSH 1.3, 1.5, and 2.0 protocol Standards)
• SFTP client and server support in both SSH1 and SSH2 protocols.
• Kerberos and AFS Ticket Passing
• Data Compression

Click here to know more details about OpenSSH features.

Step 1 – Install / Update OpenSSH Server

OpenSSH Server is available under default yum repositories. We can install or update the latest OpenSSH server using following command available under yum repositories.

On CentOS/RHEL 7 Systems:

sudo yum install openssh-server 

On Fedora and CentOS/RHEL 8 Systems:

sudo dnf install openssh-server 

Step 2 – Start OpenSSH Service

After installing or upgrading OpenSSH latest rpm packages, start the service using the following command and make it autostart on system boot.

sudo systemctl enable sshd 
sudo systemctl restart sshd 

Step 3 – Open Port in Firewall

If you are using iptables to secure your server, use the following command to open port for SSH access.

iptables -A INPUT -s 192.168.1.0/24 -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT 

What Next: 5 Tips to secure openssh-server