How to SSH from Windows OS

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SSH is an encrypted network protocol used for remote access. Here’s how to use SSH in Windows using native and third-party apps.

How to use SSH with PuTTY

PuTTY is a lightweight SSH client available for Windows and is available on MCECS supported Windows machines. Additionally, it is freely available online and can be downloaded for use on your personal computer from: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

To connect:

Run PuTTY. The configuration window will appear. It looks like the screenshot below.

  • Enter the hostname of the machine you want to connect to.
  • Press the Open button.
  • If this is the first time you have attempted to connect to this host, PuTTY will warn you that it cannot guarantee that the computer you’re connecting to is who it says it is. Press ‘Yes’ to save the key in PuTTY’s cache.
  • Enter your MCECS *nix credentials to log in

How to use Bitvise ssh client

Go to the official website of the Bitvise and click on the Download menu given on the top right side. Under that, we will find two options: Bitvise SSH client and Bitvise SSH server. Select the SSH client and download its executable file. For convenience here is the link to download Bitvise.

After the installation is complete, open the Bitvise client and the first screen which you will see will be like given below.

  • For using or to connect some server click on the Login tab given at the top of the software.
  • Click inside the Host box given under the server section.
  • Type the IP address of the remote server. In our case, we want to access Ubuntu-based server that’s IP address x.x.x.x
  • After adding the remote server IP address go to the Authentication side
  • Where add the username of the remote machine which you want to access.
  • Just below that, you will see the Initial method to authenticate. There are many methods generally we select only the password. If you want to connect the SSH with high security then you can choose public key or Publickey+password or other suitable methods but for such method, the public key should be with you. However, here we are selecting the password.
  • Now click on the login button.

Then it will ask to enter the password of the remote machine to authenticate

Successful access

How to use SSH with MobaXterm

MobaXterm is available on MCECS supported Windows machines and is available free of charge for personal machines here: https://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/download.html

Unlike PuTTY, MobaXterm supports more advanced features, such as the ability to run X applications (i.e. graphical applications) remotely.

To connect, do the following:

Open MobaxTerm. Click the “Start local terminal” button as shown in the screenshot below.

Once the local terminal has started, you can start an SSH session by typing the following:

ssh username@hostname

Where username is your MCECS username, and hostname is a valid MCECS Linux computer. You will usually be prompted for your password on the remote host and you will then be communicating with a shell on that machine.

For example, the user user would ssh into the host ada.cs.pdx.edu by typing the following:

ssh [email protected]

How to use SSH with Powershell

Any up-to-date Windows 10 PC can run SSH via the native Powershell application (SSH support was added in the Win10 April 2018 update).

In order to open Powershell, follow these steps:

  1. Press the Windows key, or otherwise open the Windows Search Bar
  2. Type “powershell”
  3. Click on the app titled “Windows PowerShell

Once inside Powershell, you can start an SSH session by typing the following:

ssh username@hostname

Where username is your MCECS username, and hostname is a valid MCECS Linux computer. You will usually be prompted for your password on the remote host and you will then be communicating with a shell on that machine.

For example, the user user would ssh into the host ada.cs.pdx.edu by typing the following:

ssh [email protected]


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