Question

Difference between ssh and sshd

Posted on May 18, 2017
Security Ubuntu 16.04
Asked by ariziragoran

I’m trying to secure my environment to possible intruders and i’m wondering what is the difference between ssh and sshd. I’ve already disabled clear text passwords and i’d like to know if i can turn off sshd? Or will that stop me from logging in myself. Thanks.

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Jonathan Tittle • May 18, 2017

Accepted Answer

@ariziragoran

The client is ssh, the daemon is sshd.

If you disable sshd, you won’t be able to login remotely, so you’d effectively be locked out of the server. You’re only means of logging in at that point would be via console, though console doesn’t accept SSH Keys – only passwords, so you’d essentially lock yourself out of console as well.

sshd is what listens for an incoming connection – i.e. when you attempt to connect via SSH from your local PC/Mac/Laptop/etc.

If you disable ssh, you won’t be able to use SSH to connect to other machines (such as in the event you need to copy files from one server to another).