Hacking Pepper’s Linux (setting up SSH)

Yes, it’s here.

And since there’s virtually zero third-party information about this thing on the net, expect this category of my site to get very busy, very soon.

I got the Pepper Pad for two reasons:

  • Easy-to-use , portable web browsing throughout my home
  • Makes a decent portable video player too
  • Has full Linux distro, meaning can be hacked to your heart’s content, which for me means run lots of emulators

So after about 15 minutes, I’ve got sshd running so I can at least login to it remotely and not have to use the xterm with the thumb-board.

Here’s how to do it:

  • Open the xterm – press Ctrl-Shift-1.
  • Edit the /etc/sshdconfig file to allow remote root logins: vi /etc/ssh/sshdconfig
  • Find the line that says PermitRootLogin, and uncomment it (remove the # from the beginning of the line, put the cursor on it and hit x), then save (ZZ)
  • Assign a root password. Run ‘passwd’. SSH clients don’t seem to want to let me login as root with no password, for good reason 🙂
  • Start the ssh server: /etc/rc.d/init.d/ssh start
  • If you want the ssh server to start on every cold boot: ln -s /etc/rc.d/init.d/ssh /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/S89ssh
  • Now you can login remotely, run ‘ifconfig’ on the Pepper to find your IP address, then ssh to it as root from the other machine.
 

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2 replies


  1. Instead of creating a symlink you can just run the following:

    initdconfig ssh on

    To see all available services, run:

    initdconfig –list

    🙂


  2. just an FYI, my sshdconfig was actually sshd_config. everything else worked great – thanks for the HowTo 😉