Tag: putty

This article is the third of a series I’ve written about migrating from using PuTTy on Windows to using the native OpenSSH client now available on Windows 10: you can read the rest of the articles via:

1. Installation
2. Storing keys using the SSH Agent
3. Importing existing keys < You are here
4. Creating a new public/private key pair
5. Other useful OpenSSH commands
6. Configuring Windows Git

If you’ve been using SSH for a while, you’ve probably got a variety of private keys in either PuTTy’s own “PPK” format or OpenSSH format. Windows OpenSSH only has support for OpenSSH keys (go figure from the name! 😉 ) and so any PuTTY keys will need converting first.

Converting PuTTy PPK Private Keys to OpenSSH format

1. Open PuTTyGen
2. Select “Load an existing private key file” and select your .ppk private key
3. Select from the menu “Conversions->Export OpenSSH key”
4. Save the file.
5. Repeat the previous three steps as necessary for all .ppk files

Adding OpenSSH private keys

In a normal PowerShell window (i.e. not as administrator), just run:
ssh-add C:\Users\userName\.ssh\private_key
Of course, changing the path of the key appropriately!

Windows appears to accept standard private keys and .pem private keys

This article is the first of a series I’ve written about migrating from using PuTTy on Windows to using the native OpenSSH client now available on Windows 10: you can read the rest of the articles via:

1. Installation < You are here
2. Storing keys using the SSH Agent
3. Importing existing keys
4. Creating a new public/private key pair
5. Other useful OpenSSH commands
6. Configuring Windows Git

I’ve been a very very long time use of the excellent PuTTy SSH tools (since at least version 0.52 in 2002: at the time of writing, release 0.72 came out on the 20th of July 2019), but Windows 10 v1809 (also known as the Windows 10 April 2018 update), Microsoft finally added SSH support directly to Windows.

Whilst Microsoft does have a guide on their website about installing OpenSSH on Windows 10, it mixes setting up the OpenSSH client (which most people will want) with the OpenSSH server (which most people do not want) and it doesn’t give a guide on moving/migrating from PuTTy, so here’s the start of my guide!

Installation via PowerShell

1. Open PowerShell as administrator:
2. Install openSSH client:
   Add-WindowsCapability -Online -Name OpenSSH.Client~~~~0.0.1.0
   You should get output such as:

   Path          :
   Online        : True
   RestartNeeded : False
   

You will now have ssh, ssh-keygen, ssh-agent, ssh-add, ssh-keyscan, sftp and scp available!

The next step is setting up the ssh agent to store the keys