I have installed OpenSSH (server + client) on my N900 to login from my laptop and it works when I use the IP address. To make it a little easier to login, i started playing with avahi-daemon to be able to login with a hostname instead of the ip address. After googling a bit i found this page: http://thpmaemo.blogspot.com/2008/11...-on-maemo.html. It says that, by default, Avahi doesn't seem to work because it is started before D-Bus (the article says that both D-Bus and avahi start with an S20-script, but on my N900 avahi is started with an S14 script, while D-Bus with S20). After i manually started the avahi-daemon (with /etc/init.d/avahi-daemon start), i could remotely login with SSH by using the hostname instead of the ip-address.

So now i'm thinking about renaming S14avahi-daemon to S21avahi-daemon so it is started after D-Bus. I have also modified /etc/init.d/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf to change the hostname to something easier to remember, instead of the default Nokia-N90051-1.
However, on http://wiki.maemo.org/OTA_to_PR1.1_troubleshooting, I read about the possibilities of breaking OTA updates. Are changes like safe to do or will they help to break the future OTA updates?

I'm also wondering how heavy it is to run OpenSSH and avahi (on battery). If i just let the services run during one day without connecting/using them during that day, will it reduce my battery life with hours, or rather just a few minutes?