How to SSH from a UI GPON

Ubiquiti’s or UI’s GPONs do not have a SSH client by default. Or do they?

If you type “ssh” and hit return, you’ll receive a “not found” error.

Typically on devices like home routers, GPONs, UniFi AP’s etc, ssh is handled by Dropbear. Dropbear provides a Secure Shell compatible server and client and is typically used in embedded systems.

To SSH from a GPON to another device, use dbclient

dbclient ubnt@192.168.1.20

dbclient is the Dropbear client. AKA, SSH client.

How To Increase Session Timeout for SSH

From the server side, edit the /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Change, uncomment, or add

ClientAliveInterval 120
ClientAliveCountMax 15

Change the AliveInterval and CountMax as desired.

More info on the AliveIntercal and CountMax.

ClientAliveCountMax Sets the number of client alive messages which may be sent without sshd(8) receiving any messages back from the client. If this threshold is reached while client alive messages are being sent, sshd will disconnect the client, terminating the session. It is important to note that the use of client alive messages is very different from TCPKeepAlive. The client alive messages are sent through the encrypted channel and therefore will not be spoofable. The TCP keepalive option enabled by TCPKeepAlive is spoofable. The client alive mechanism is valuable when the client or server depend on knowing when a connection has become unresponsive.

The default value is 3. If ClientAliveInterval is set to 15, and ClientAliveCountMax is left at the default, unresponsive SSH clients will be disconnected after approximately 45 seconds. Setting a zero

ClientAliveCountMax disables connection termination.ClientAliveInterval Sets a timeout interval in seconds after which if no data has been received from the client, sshd(8) will send a message through the encrypted channel to request a response from the client. The default is 0, indicating that these messages will not be sent to the client.

More information
https://man.openbsd.org/sshd_config

Install SSH Server on Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, RedHat)

Debian / Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install -y openssh-server

RPM based Distros, Fedora / CentOS / RedHat

sudo dnf install -y openssh-server

or use yum

sudo yum install -y openssh-server

Start ssh service

sudo systemctl start sshd

By default the SSH service should start when the system starts, but if not try the following command to enable the service on boot up.

Debian / Ubuntu

systemctl enable ssh

Fedora, CentOS, RedHat

systemctl enable sshd

Change SSH port

Not necessary, but it is a good idea to change the default ssh port.  To change the port edit the sshd file.

vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config

If you change the port, you’ll need to allow it in the firewall (firewalld, iptables) and if SELinux is enabled, semanage.