SSH server setup on Fedora

SSH server setup on Fedora | Generated by AI

Home 2026.06

Question: Explain what this bash script does, line by line.

Answer:

This sets up SSH access on a Fedora/RHEL-family Linux box (uses dnf, so not Debian/Ubuntu).

# Install the OpenSSH server package (the daemon that accepts incoming SSH connections)
sudo dnf install -y openssh-server

dnf is the package manager. openssh-server provides sshd. The -y auto-confirms. Note: openssh-clients (the ssh command for outgoing connections) is usually already installed — this is the server side, so other machines can connect in.

# Enable the service at boot AND start it immediately, in one command
sudo systemctl enable --now sshd

enable creates the symlink so sshd launches on every boot. --now also starts it this instant, saving you a separate systemctl start sshd. Without --now, it’d be enabled but not running until reboot.

# Verify the daemon is active (look for "active (running)")
sudo systemctl status sshd

Shows state, PID, recent log lines. Exit code is 0 if running, non-zero otherwise — useful in scripts via systemctl is-active sshd.

# Print the machine's IP addresses so you know where to SSH to
ip addr show | grep "inet "

ip addr show dumps all interfaces. grep "inet " (trailing space) filters to IPv4 lines only — excludes inet6. You’ll see something like inet <IP_ADDRESS>/24 on your LAN interface (e.g. eth0/enp3s0) plus 127.0.0.1 for loopback. The LAN one is what you connect to.

Then from another machine: ssh user@<IP_ADDRESS>.

A few things the script omits that matter in practice:

Firewall. Fedora ships firewalld enabled by default, which will block port 22 even with sshd running. Add: sudo firewall-cmd --add-service=ssh --permanent && sudo firewall-cmd --reload.
Cleaner IP lookup. ip -4 -br addr gives a one-line-per-interface summary, or hostname -I prints just the IPs space-separated — easier to script around than grepping ip addr.
Confirm it’s listening. sudo ss -tlnp | grep :22 proves sshd actually bound to the port, which is stronger evidence than systemctl status.

For your setup (lzw@192.168.1.36), once this runs and the firewall rule is added, you’d reach it from the Air with ssh lzw@192.168.1.36. Drop an SSH key in with ssh-copy-id to skip password auth entirely.

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