How to Remote Access Raspberry Pi using SSH over the Internet

Raspberry Pi, the popular single-board computer, is widely used for various projects ranging from home automation, industrial automation, to smart city projects and even as an AI Robotics controller.

One of the key features of the Raspberry Pi is its ability to be accessed remotely, which allows you to control and manage your Raspberry Pi from another device over the internet.

One common method to remotely access a Raspberry Pi IoT is using Secure Shell (SSH), a network protocol that provides a secure way to communicate with a remote device.

In this article, we will provide you with a step-by-step guide on how to remotely access your Raspberry Pi using SSH, making it easier than ever to manage your Raspberry Pi from anywhere in the world.

Let’s dive in and unlock the full potential of your Raspberry Pi with remote access via SSH!

Step 1: Set Up Your Raspberry Pi for remote SSH access

Before you can remotely access your Raspberry Pi, you need to make sure that it is set up correctly.

This includes installing an operating system (such as Raspbian), connecting it to the internet using an ethernet cable or through Wi-Fi and verify if you can ping ‘www.google.com’ from the Pi.

Once your Raspberry Pi is up and running, you are ready to proceed with remote access.

Step 2: Enable SSH on Your Raspberry Pi

By default, SSH is disabled on a Raspberry Pi for security reasons. However, you can easily enable it using the following steps:

1. Open a terminal window on your Raspberry Pi or connect to it via a remote desktop solution.
2. Type the following command to open the Raspberry Pi Configuration tool: sudo raspi-config and press Enter.
3. In the Raspberry Pi Configuration tool, navigate to Interfacing Options and press Enter.
4. Scroll down and select SSH and press Enter.
5. Choose Enable and press Enter to enable SSH on your Raspberry Pi.
6. Exit the Raspberry Pi Configuration tool by selecting Finish and pressing Enter.

Step 3: Set up IoT Remote Access software

Remote access to the SSH server running in your Raspberry Pi requires installing and running a secure remote access software (a VPN like software) on the Pi.

Once the remote access software is installed on the Raspberry Pi, the Raspberry Pi device can be securely accessed from anywhere in the world.

SocketXP, a popular IoT Remote Access software platform, enables you to easily manage, control, monitor and remote access a fleet of Raspberry Pi from a web portal.

How SocketXP IoT Remote Access solution works

First, you need to install the SocketXP agent on your Rasperry Pi.

The agent will securely connect (using an SSL/TLS tunnel) to the SocketXP IoT Cloud Gateway using an authentication token.

You can then SSH connect to your Raspberry Pi from the SocketXP Web Portal or using your own SSH client such as PuTTY.

Follow the steps below to install and setup SocketXP agent on your Raspberry Pi.

Step 3.1: Download and Install

Follow the download and install instructions to install the SocketXP agent on your Raspberry Pi device.

Step 3.2: Get your Authentication Token

Sign up at https://portal.socketxp.com and get your authentication token.

Use the following command to login to the SocketXP IoT Cloud Gateway using the auth token.

$ socketxp login [your-auth-token-goes-here]

Step 3.3: Connect the device to the SocketXP Cloud Gateway

Use the following command to connect the Raspberry Pi to the cloud gateway using a secure SSL/TLS connection.

 $ socketxp connect tcp://localhost:22

Connected to SocketXP Cloud Gateway.
Access the device securely using the SocketXP agent in IoT Slave Mode.

For the security of your device, SocketXP IoT Solution doesn’t create any public TCP endpoints that can be connected by any SSH client from the internet.

SocketXP private tunnel endpoints are not exposed to the internet and can be accessed only using the SocketXP agent (in IoT slave mode using the auth token of the user) or through the web terminal in the SocketXP web portal as shown below.

Single-Touch Installation Command

The 3 step instruction explained above to setup SocketXP on your Raspberry Pi is a tedious process, if you have thousands of Raspberry Pi devices to install, configure and manage.

With this in mind, SocketXP IoT Remote Access Solution also provides a single-touch installation command for installing and configuring SocketXP IoT Agent on large number Raspberry Pi devices.

Copy and paste the below single-touch installation command from the SocketXP Portal page on to the terminal of your Raspberry Pi. The command shown below will download a shell script that will install, configure, setup SocketXP IoT agent on your Raspberry Pi. After the command completes, the Raspberry Pi device would show up as online in the SocketXP Portal page.

Step 4: Accessing the Raspberry Pi SSH from your laptop

Your Raspberry Pi is now ready to be accessed remotely from anywhere in the world using SSH by simply logging in to the SocketXP Web Portal.

Head to the “Devices” section, find your Raspberry Pi device listed in the table. Click the terminal icon next to your device. It will take you to a SSH login screen.

Provide the login and password setup for your device. Once the login is successful, it will put you in a shell prompt.

The above screen capture shows the “htop” command output from an SSH session created using the SSH web terminal window in the SocketXP web portal.

Step 4.1: Configuring SocketXP agent to run in slave mode

This is an alternate method for connecting to your Raspberry Pi from a remote location using the SocketXP solution.

If you don’t want to access your Raspberry Pi from the browser and you want to access it using your own SSH client such as PuTTY then follow the instructions below.

This method is extremely useful if you want to setup and use SSH public private keys to remote access your Rasperry Pi.

First download and install the SocketXP agent software on your accessing device (such as a laptop running Windows or Mac OS).

Next, configure the agent to run in slave mode (or local proxy mode) using the command option “–iot-slave” as shown in the example below.

$ socketxp connect tcp://localhost:3000 --iot-slave --peer-device-id "2233-4455-abcd-34445" --peer-device-port 22 --authtoken <auth token>

Listening for TCP connections at:
Local URL -> tcp://localhost:3000

You shall find the device ID of your Raspberry Pi from the SocketXP Portal page in the IoT Devices section.

Now you can access your Raspberry Pi’s SSH server using the above SocketXP local endpoint, as shown below.

The following example uses a command line based OpenSSH client tool to connect to the Raspberry Pi IoT SSH shell.

$ ssh -i ~/.ssh/john-private.key john@localhost -p 3000

You can use your own SSH client such as PuTTY to connect to your remote Raspberry Pi SSH shell.

How to install OpenSSH server on your Raspberry Pi device

All Raspberry Pi devices come with SSH Server installed. If your device is not Raspberry Pi based and you want to know how to install and configure SSH server, SSH clients, SSH public/private keys for remote SSH access, continue reading the below sections.

OpenSSH is a free open source software that uses SSH protocol to create secure and encrypted communication channels over computer networks.

Open SSH is developed by the Open BST Community and it is released under a Simplified BSD License

OpenSSH comes with additional features such as SFTP and SCP to perform secure file transfer and secure copy over a computer network.

To install and run SSH server on your Raspberry Pi device, execute the following commands:

Debian/Ubuntu Linux:

First update your linux and then install the openssh server

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install openssh-server

The following commands will enable and run SSH server as a daemon in the background.

$ sudo systemctl enable ssh
$ sudo systemctl start ssh

RHEL/CentOS Linux:

$ sudo yum update
$ sudo yum -y install openssh-server

Then enable SSH server and start it.

$ sudo chkconfig sshd on
$ sudo service sshd start

SSH uses port 22 for communication. If it is not enabled already, execute the following command to open up the SSH port on your linux system.

$ sudo /sbin/iptable -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT
$ sudo service iptables save

How to install SSH client on your client machines

Use the following command to install SSH client on your laptops or any device from where you would remote SSH into your Raspberry Pi.

Debian/Ubuntu

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install openssh-client

RHEL/CentOS

$ sudo yum update
$ sudo yum -y install openssh-client

How to create and setup SSH public private keys

SSH uses a public/private key based encryption algorithm for encrypting the communication channel. Use the ssh-keygen command to generate SSH keys for those clients that need to SSH into your Raspberry Pi devices.

Go to your client machine (Laptop, for eg.) and open up a terminal and execute the following command. Follow the instructions on the screen to create a public/private key pair.

$ ssh-keygen -b 4096
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/your_home/.ssh/id_rsa):

The keys will be saved usually in your home directory under the “.ssh” folder.

Leave the private key in your client machine. Copy just the contents of /home/your_)home/.ssh/id_rsa.pub file and paste it (actually append it) to the “~/.ssh/authorized_keys” file in your Raspberry Pi device where the SSH server runs.

From now on, you can login to your Raspberry Pi remotely using the SSH private key in your client machine using the following command

$ ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.key [email protected] -p 23224

Disable Password Authentication on your SSH Server

After configuring your SSH server and client to use private/public key for authentication, it is wise and safe to turn off password based authentication, because passwords are relatively easy to crack.

Before you perform this step, make sure you have setup your public/private key pairs correctly and you are able to login using them. Otherwise, once you disable password authentication, you’ll be locked out of your Raspberry Pi.

To disable password authentication, open the SSH server’s configuration file as a sudo user.

sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Inside the file, search for a directive called PasswordAuthentication. This may be commented out. Uncomment the line and set the value to “no”. This will disable your ability to log in to the SSH server using account passwords:

PasswordAuthentication no

Save and close the file when you are finished.

To actually implement the changes we just made, you must restart the service.

On Ubuntu or Debian machines, you can issue this command:

sudo service ssh restart

On CentOS/Fedora machines, issue the following command:

sudo service sshd restart

After completing this step, you’ve successfully transitioned your SSH daemon to only respond to SSH keys.

Security Best Practices:

As with any remote access solution, enabling SSH on a Raspberry Pi comes with security implications.

You need to follow SSH remote access security best practices to keep your Raspberry Pi secure from any potential threats.

It is essential that you periodically review these security best practices and ensure that your Raspberry Pi is adhering strictly to the security guidelines.

Advantages of using SocketXP for Raspberry Pi remote SSH access:

SocketXP uses secure reverse proxy SSL/TLS tunnels to connect to your Raspberry Pi over the internet, so that your device is not directly exposed to the internet. Also, the data transmitted is encrypted using SSL/TLS.

SSH uses the same cryptography technology used by banks and governments to exchange highly confidential data over the internet.

The data transferred gets encrypted end-to-end between the SSH client and the SSH server.

SocketXP has no way to decrypt or eavesdrop your encrypted data without knowing your SSH private keys. SocketXP merely acts as an SSL/TLS reverse proxy server for your encrypted data traffic transmitted through the SSH connection.

Conclusion

Remotely accessing your Raspberry Pi via SSH provides a convenient and powerful way to manage your Raspberry Pi from anywhere in the world.

By following the steps outlined in this article, you can easily enable SSH, install SocketXP IoT Remote Access agent on it, and connect to it remotely using SSH.

Once connected, you can perform various tasks to manage your Raspberry Pi remotely, including updating packages, installing/removing software, configuring settings, transferring files, managing processes, and performing system maintenance.

SocketXP is a cloud based IoT Device Management and Remote Access Platform that simplifies managing and monitoring IoT devices at scale.

With remote access, you can unlock the full potential of your Raspberry Pi and use it for a wide range of applications with ease and convenience. Happy remote Raspberry Pi-ing!