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Comment by shak77

8 years ago

Took them? Why should Windows come with an SSH client?

I don't work for Microsoft, but my guess would be in order to securely access a shell. (Remotely, but srsh doesn't roll off the tongue)

Honestly though, I'm more interested in an SSH server for Windows. I haven't tried for many years, but last time I did, getting something more secure than telnet was a massive pain.

  • I'm using this in production on a Windows Server 2016

    https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/wiki/Install-Win...

    It works but I never managed to connect to it using public/private keys, only username and password.

    Luckily I don't have to type them:

    sshpass -f password.txt user@windows.host "powershell Stop-Computer"

    It would be great if at least Windows Server came with a built in ssh server.

  • Why? If you're on Windows and managing Windows, you just use WinRM for a PowerShell session. Even then, though, most of the tools support RPC so your tools already communicate with remote systems.

    "No SSH" doesn't mean "no remote management capability." SSH hasn't been available because you don't need it unless you need to manage a Linux system or a network device. The only reason it's being introduced now is because people like to use git, and git fucking sucks if you're not in a POSIX environment.

    • At the time I wanted to manage my only Windows box remotely, and from mobile devices that had nothing but ssh and vnc. (SSH being the clear winner there.)

  • I run Cygwin sshd - I wouldn't expose it to the internet, but have no qualms about using it after hopping through a Linux box.

    • Yeah. My memory is fuzzy... I think I got to that step, but I couldn't figure out how to have it start with the machine without a bunch of hoops and caveats. But that was many years ago and I could be mixing it up with something else.

      1 reply →

For the same reason Windows came with a telnet client?

  • This.

    Every router for the past 10 years has shipped with an SSH client. If you wanted to login to it securely from a Windows box, you had to download Putty first, or enable some janky self-signed web interface.

From the article:

> For years, Apple MacBooks have been the go-to choice for many admins partly because getting to a ssh shell is so easy.