Android sshd

I have not been a fan of Android File Transfer. I remember there are a few sshd for Android.

Someone mentioned about SSHelper. While it doesn’t seem to have source code on Github, it is a GPLed open source software by Paul Lutus.

It provides ssh access to your android.

pc$ ssh 192.168.10.227 -p 2222.
  • Sshd is running on port 2222.
  • User doesn’t matter.
  • You can log in with password by default. The default password is admin.

Configuration

  • Change password to something better from the Android UI.
  • Install my public key to Android.
pc$ ssh-copy-id ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub -p 2222 192.168.10.227
  • Disable password login from the Android UI.

It seems to run Log server and Clipboard server on port 8080 and port 8081 respectively. I really don’t want Android’s clipboard to be exposed on local network.

  • Enable log display server -> uncheck
  • Enable clipboard display server -> uncheck

What is Zoneconf?

Zoneconf allows discovery of services locally. One of the implementation is Apple’s Bonjour.

Access the android device with name.

SSHelper supports Zoneconf (Bonjour).

The device name is shown on the SSHelper UI as ‘Device name’. My Android phone’s device name was V20.

From my mac, I could access my phone with:

pc$ ssh v20.local -p 2222

and by defining an entry in ~/.ssh/config, I could eliminate -p 2222:

# SSHelper on my android phone
Host v20.local
  Port 2222

Now it is pretty easy to log in to the android phone:

pc $ ssh v20.loocal
SSHelper Version 10.3 Copyright 2017, P. Lutus
V20:3.18.31-perf-g07e5962
u0_a262@msm8996:/data/data/com.arachnoid.sshelper/home $