PuTTY and SSH

Introduction

Some EAS development activities require that the developer access an EAS Linux VM from their Windows machine to perform certain tasks, for example, to administer an EAS VM, or to perform database queries.  This page describes how to use PuTTY and Secure Shell (SSH) to access an EAS Linux VM from a Windows machine to achieve those ends.

PuTTY

Install PuTTY

Download PuTTY media from https://www.putty.org/, and install it on your Windows machine by following the instructions in the PuTTY Setup Wizard.

Generating Private and Public Keys

There is online documentation for PuTTY 0.62, for example.  All of the screenshots that follow are from PuTTY 0.62.

Navigate to Chapter 8: Using public keys for SSH authentication, and read Section 8.2 Using PuTTYgen, the PuTTY key generator to begin generating the new private and public keys.  The screenshots that follow illustrate the key steps in the process.

1 Run PuTTYgen.

2 Inspect the default parameter values, and then press the "Generate" button.

3 Move the mouse over the blank area for a few seconds to proceed.

4 Replace the default Key comment with your email address, and enter, then confirm, a passphrase that you will remember.

5 Use the buttons to save both the public key (jd_eas_public_key.txt) and the private key (jd_eas_private_key.ppk) somewhere on your Windows machine.  It is also worth selecting (right-click, then Select All), and then saving (jd_eas_public_key_paste.txt), the public key from the first text field that is in the PuTTY Key Generator dialog.

6 Exit the PuTTY Key Generator dialog.

7 Request access to one or more EAS Linux VMs, and provide the file jd_eas_public_key_paste.txt to the EAS administrator who is fulfilling your request. For an example, see service request SER0159691.

SSH

PuTTY can be used to configure and save an SSH session.  Navigate to Chapter 2: Getting started with PuTTY and read this short chapter before creating an SSH session.

Create an SSH Login Session

Create an SSH login session if you intend to log in to an EAS Linux VM and execute Linux shell commands.  The SSH login session in this example will be for the SF DEV WEB VM (San Francisco data center, DEVelopment environment, eas WEB server, Virtual Machine).

The appropriate IP addresses will be provided by an EAS administrator for any sessions that you need to create.

Sensitive information has been redacted in the screenshots that follow.

1 Run PuTTY.

2 Under the Session category, enter the IP address of the target VM in the Host Name field, and specify port 2241 in the Port field.

3 Under "Authentication parameters", browse to the private key file (jd_eas_private_key.ppk) that was saved in Step 5 above.

4 The remainder of the configuration consists of default values.  The following naming convention for the session name should be followed to maintain consistency with standard EAS nomenclature.  The session name for this example is highlighted in bold font in the table below.

5 Return to the Session category to save this session.  Enter the session name in the Saved Sessions field, and press the "Save" button.

6 Before the saved session can be tested, an EAS administrator must place your public key on the target VM, which should have been done in Step 7 above.

Create an SSH Tunnel Session

Create an SSH tunnel session if you intend to access an EAS database from pgAdmin (or another database client product) running on your Windows machine.

1 Run PuTTY.