Thankfully a silly puffer fish exists in the form of an awesome Mac OS application. It’s called Fugu, and it’s about to make your life a hell of a lot easier.

Fugu allows you to easily connect to your Ubuntu machine (via SSH) from home (like a home network) or while you’re away.

I’ll show you how to combine the power of open-ssh with Fugu to create an Ubuntu/OS X bond that would make Neo weep with pride.

Gathering The Goods…

Before we dig into any installing, we need to figure out what your external and internal (network) IP address is for your Ubuntu computer.

To get your external IP address, I recommend going to whatismyip.com – your IP address will be sitting in front of your face as soon as the page loads. Done.

To get your computers network IP address (the IP address given to you by your router, assuming you have one) open terminal in Ubuntu and type ifconfig. You should see something similar to the following:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:17:31:A6:D2:B9
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
          Interrupt:17 

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:17:31:A6:CA:73
          inet addr:10.0.1.2  Bcast:255.255.255.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::217:31ff:fea6:ca73/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:734005 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:634475 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:626690669 (597.6 MB)  TX bytes:243085749 (231.8 MB)
          Interrupt:21 Base address:0x6000 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:80 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:80 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:6264 (6.1 KB)  TX bytes:6264 (6.1 KB)

The highlighted code above is your computers IP. It’ll probably start with 10.x.x.x, 192.x.x.x or 127.x.x.x – in any case, it’ll should be within the eth0 or eth1 sections.

Installing Open-SSH

Now that you’ve got your external IP and your computers IP, it’s time to install open-ssh on Ubuntu. Open Synaptic Package Manager (System -> Administration) and search for openssh-server. Install it. Done.

Installing Fugu

While on your Mac, go to the Fugu website (http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/fugu/) and download the dmg file. Install it. Done.

Rollin’ With Fugu

After installing Fugu, open it. You should see something like this:

• Assuming you’re at home wanting to connect to your Ubuntu machine, in the “Connect to:” field, type your Ubuntu computer (internal) IP address. (Remember, this should something like 10.x.x.x, 192.x.x.x, or 127.x.x.x) If you’re away from home and you want to connect to your Ubuntu machine, type your external IP address in the “Connect to:” field.
• The username should be the same username you use to login to your Ubuntu machine.
• Use port 22. (This is the port used by SSH)
• Hit Connect. (If you see a warning message appear, click continue.)
• Enter your Ubuntu machine’s password associated with the username you used. (You may save the password to OS X’s keychain so you never have to enter it again.)

Fugu should connect you with your Ubuntu machine!

Oh yeah. DONE.