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Will this OpenSSH server be able to run interactive console programs (like cmd.exe or python.exe), or will it be limited to (say) PowerShell? Windows doesn't h

Will this OpenSSH server be able to run interactive console programs (like cmd.exe or python.exe), or will it be limited to (say) PowerShell? Windows doesn't have a good API for hosting a console--it's not like Unix, where a pty has a master end and a slave end. Trying to run a console program in mintty.exe (https://github.com/mintty/mintty/issues/56 https://github.com/mintty/mintty/issues/56) or Cygwin SSHD fails for this reason. I wrote a tool, winpty, that makes a best-effort attempt to emulate a Unix pty master by scraping the console buffer, but it has some limitations, so I'm not sure Microsoft would want to use it. Maybe they would expand the console API?

toyg 11y ago
> Will this OpenSSH server be able to run interactive console programs I would think so. Anything less would not be a real SSH server.
asveikau 11y ago
I too was very skeptical. Something about posts from "The Powershell Team" about porting sshd makes me deeply cynical that they would get the integration right from a layering perspective, i.e. as if they would make it support powershell and nothing else. Fortunately this example shows it going straight into cmd and then they invoke powershell as a next step: C:\Master>ssh.exe -l user@127.0.0.1 user@127.0.0.1's password: ********** Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.10566] (c) 2016 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. user@DEV-10566-829 C:\Users\user>powershell -File - - https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/wiki/ssh.exe-examples https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/wiki/ssh.exe-exa... That gives me some hope that it's being done right.
- geofft 11y ago
  There are these two interesting commits, "Add pty mode support code": https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/commit/55f2ec6825e720e1395d77ece55fb411c861bb18 https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/commit/55f2ec682... and "Add ANSI parsing engine and console draw support to SSH client": https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/commit/7aac59e524e6dc9f1c1faed18340cff7dfd9a47c https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/commit/7aac59e52... Something about this reminds me of ANSI.SYS.
  - est 11y ago
    you could run ANSI.sys in modern cmd.exe, sadly there's no ANSI.sys in Win7 anymore. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.msdos.batch.nt/YZnoq80Mcds https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.msdos.batch.nt/Y...
    - geofft 11y ago
      Cool. Looks like that is essentially listing DEVICE=ANSI.SYS in config.nt? Google results imply some things about 16-bit emulation here -- was that post about running actual DOS ANSI.SYS in a VDM running actual DOS COMMAND.COM, within a native Windows terminal?
      - est 11y ago
        IIRC, the command.com only bootstrap the ANSI coloring, after that you can run anything in cmd.exe

toyg 11y ago

> Will this OpenSSH server be able to run interactive console programs I would think so. Anything less would not be a real SSH server.

asveikau 11y ago

I too was very skeptical. Something about posts from "The Powershell Team" about porting sshd makes me deeply cynical that they would get the integration right from a layering perspective, i.e. as if they would make it support powershell and nothing else. Fortunately this example shows it going straight into cmd and then they invoke powershell as a next step: C:\Master>ssh.exe -l user@127.0.0.1 user@127.0.0.1's password: ********** Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.10566] (c) 2016 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. user@DEV-10566-829 C:\Users\user>powershell -File - - https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/wiki/ssh.exe-examples https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/wiki/ssh.exe-exa... That gives me some hope that it's being done right.

geofft 11y ago
There are these two interesting commits, "Add pty mode support code": https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/commit/55f2ec6825e720e1395d77ece55fb411c861bb18 https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/commit/55f2ec682... and "Add ANSI parsing engine and console draw support to SSH client": https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/commit/7aac59e524e6dc9f1c1faed18340cff7dfd9a47c https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/commit/7aac59e52... Something about this reminds me of ANSI.SYS.
- est 11y ago
  you could run ANSI.sys in modern cmd.exe, sadly there's no ANSI.sys in Win7 anymore. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.msdos.batch.nt/YZnoq80Mcds https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.msdos.batch.nt/Y...
  - geofft 11y ago
    Cool. Looks like that is essentially listing DEVICE=ANSI.SYS in config.nt? Google results imply some things about 16-bit emulation here -- was that post about running actual DOS ANSI.SYS in a VDM running actual DOS COMMAND.COM, within a native Windows terminal?
    - est 11y ago
      IIRC, the command.com only bootstrap the ANSI coloring, after that you can run anything in cmd.exe