How to view Linux files across internet?

Question

Hello. Basically what I want to do is to be able to see my "Home" folder in linux across internet, say if I am at school or work or something. Preferably password protected, I'm not really sure what this is called...thinking from reading around it is called FTP...maybe SSH? I'm not sure but if any of you could tell me what it is I'm wanting to do is called and how to do it that would be great. Thank you!

Jordan · Accepted Answer

You can access files using SSH. For this you will need to run an SSH server on your home PC and use a client from school or work.

You will also need to forward the port for your SSH server on your firewall/router which will be 22 by default, but can be set to any.

If you are running Linux at school/work you can SSH using terminal, if windows you can use a free program called PuTTY (first result on google)

ssh host:port


The host will be your home IP address.
By default the port will connect to port 22, so if you are using 22 you don't need to type it.

You will then be prompted for your username and password. Or you can edit the command to include them:

ssh username@host
ssh username:password@host



If you want to download the files to your work/computer you can use sftp (secure file transfer protocol) to download them.



When you first connect you will be in your home folder (~) /home/username (by default)

use command help to get a list of commands you can use. Using SFTP the commands will run on the remote host. You can run them on the local host by adding an exclamation mark to the start of the command eg:

cd /   will move you to the root directory of your PC
!cd /  will move you to the root directory of the PC you're using.

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How to view Linux files across internet?

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