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Microsoft announces support for SSH
- Yuioup 11y agoExcuse my ignorance, but can this also be used in cmd.exe context?
- jevgeni 11y agoWell, at least as CMD.EXE /R "powershell ...", I think.
- mnw21cam 11y agoAlready referenced in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9646971 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9646971
- philtar 11y agoEmbrace, extend, extinguish.
- kristofferR 11y ago"No matter what MS does, it is always wrong."
- emilsedgh 11y agoUnless they gain our trust back. I admit, they seem to be moving in an interesting direction. But up to this point, they are just trying to 'embrace'. Lets see if they will 'extinguish'.
- pluma 11y agoEmphasis being on "embrace" at this point. It's too early to cry wolf yet -- there's not even an obvious way to get from here to "extend".
- blumkvist 11y agoDepends on where you look in the product portfolio :)
- ZenoArrow 11y agoYeah. I've been really impressed with Microsoft recently. However, reading about the Secure Boot rules for Windows 10 (the Windows 8 rules were fine IMO) left a negative reaction. On the whole I still think they're doing much better than they were.
- th0waway 11y agonot to early to cry wolf, but given MS' history, I would not put it past them to try something.
- 0x0 11y agoSure there is. Add an ActiveDirectory specific auth type to the protocol and watch all non-windows clients fail to log in :)
- mhurron 11y agoJust like they killed ldap and kerberos so non-MS OS's couldn't use AD. Oh wait ... In fact, what has MS actually extinguiushed?
- dec0dedab0de 11y agoThey tried to extinguish the web, and failed. That is enough to not trust them for a long while still.
- pgeorgi 11y agoThe kerberos described in http://web.archive.org/web/20140222133423/http://www.networkworld.com/news/2000/0511kerberos.html http://web.archive.org/web/20140222133423/http://www.network...?
- weavie 11y agoIt's open source. More like, embrace, extend... their pull requests get declined.
- ed_blackburn 11y agoAbsolutely. If they fork it, it defeats the purpose - getting Windows Server to play nice in heterogeneous environments - if their contributions aren't compatible with the ethos, direction or quality of what is required, they will not be accepted.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- zaphar 11y agoWhen you want to know where a company is heading look at the past history of their current leadership. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish was the modus operandi of Gates and Ballmer. Satya Nadella is now at the helm and he does not have the same history nor is he moving in the same directions. Satya is a different person and I'm holding judgement till I see the fruits of his labor and how far his leadership trickles down.
- glxc 11y agofirst thought- MS didn't support SSH?
- acomjean 11y agoI don't think so. Thus everyone looking for a free client. The PuTTY client being popular. The offical is at a ~sgtatham/putty/ web address which seems very old school. Though recently some not official versions had malware installed if I'm remembering. I'm wondering if this is a response to that.
- wlesieutre 11y agoOld school and served over HTTP, making it not that hard for someone to MITM you and give you a backdoored client when you download it. Don't worry though, the page has checksums you can validate your download against! Except those are also served over HTTP.
- sfk 11y agoYes, sgtatham should move to a secure location like GitHub. Homakov is perhaps willing to guide the transition.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoMaybe somebody could automate the process, provide a service?!
- bad_user 11y agoAn SSH client is also included with Git for Windows, since it includes MSYS, plus Git needs to connect through SSH. There's also Cygwin, which comes with the OpenSSH server in addition to the client. For a preconfigured Cygwin when I needed it, found Babun to be useful: https://babun.github.io/ https://babun.github.io/
- Encosia 11y ago
- jaboutboul 11y agoIs it just me or does it seem like eventually windows will become some variant of unix/linux?
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoWindows support for driver development is lightyears ahead of everybody else. Picking up a library or two doesn't make it a variant of anything.
- dredmorbius 11y agoHow exactly do you mean that? The total count of devices supported by Linux exceeds that of any other OS, based on statements from Greg KH and others. Windows has an edge in some areas of proprietary desktop hardware (see Linus's infamous but richly appropriate "fuck you, Nvidia" comment). But that's superiority in a narrow (though highly significant) niche. As desktop falls in significance, that edge and leverage will be less valuable.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoI mean it as a driver developer. Its trivial to do things that are difficult or impossible anywhere else. The environment has good support for driver developers. I would dispute the 'total count' argument. Windows doesn't require rebuilding the kernel to get device support for some vendor's hardware. The total count of Windows machines actually succeeding in supporting any given device could be many times higher.
- sudioStudio64 11y agoYou are assuming that your years of experience would lend weight to your assertion...not so with some of these guys. They know what they know and one thing they know is that you, sir, are wrong. I would be interested to hear more about what you like about doing driver development on windows if you have a minute. I've only just started playing around with the platform sdk...just building samples at this point.
- jaboutboul 11y agoIs it just me or does it seem like eventually windows will become some variant of linux/unix?
- bovermyer 11y agoThis is excellent. Now I won't have to rely on that terrible, terrible program PuTTY. As for those who are claiming this is a harbinger of Microsoft trying to take over SSH... well, get those tinfoil hats ready, kids. Looks like Nadella's Microsoft is willing to play nice in a wide variety of arenas, so you'll have all kinds of things to be foolishly terrified of.
- timthorn 11y agoTerrible? Concerns over how to obtain it aside, what's wrong with PuTTY?
- dredmorbius 11y agoAnother victim of failed sarcasm tag parsing.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- sp332 11y agoAll the configuration is stored in the registry so it's difficult to hand-edit or export/import. Also it mashes a terminal emulator together with an SSH client so if you want one you're stuck with the other.
- lultimouomo 11y ago> Also it mashes a terminal emulator together with an SSH client so if you want one you're stuck with the other. That's not (completely) true, you can easily use the SSH client (plink) without the terminal emulator. It is actually quite common to do so. I don't think it works the other way around though.
- astrodust 11y ago> It is actually quite common to do so. So common I've never seen it done. Ever.
- rafa2000 11y agoI always used openssh under CygWin on Windows, not a problem but I preferred not to use Windows at all.
- jvandonsel 11y agoIt took them until the 21st century to do this?
- nailer 11y agoIf you're a Unix person looking to check out Powershell, the classic 'Rosetta Stone' got ported to Windows Server recently: https://certsimple.com/rosetta-stone https://certsimple.com/rosetta-stone . This allows you to find Windows equivalent commands of whatever version of Linux/Mac OS/SmartOS/OpenBSD you're using. Interesting insight into 'new Microsoft': first two times Powershell team asked to add SSH, they were rejected. Now it's OK: see last paragraph of http://blogs.msdn.com/b/looking_forward_microsoft__support_for_secure_shell_ssh1/archive/2015/06/02/managing-looking-forward-microsoft-support-for-secure-shell-ssh.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/looking_forward_microsoft__support_f...
- bunderbunder 11y agoI felt a great disturbance in the force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in glee and were suddenly deleting their copies of PuTTY.
- jilted 11y agoThis is great news for Administrators and IT Staff as in the Enterprise, Microsoft is still very relevant and this will only ease Management. I am of course referring to the still existent non-startup style companies which might have non-technical users/staff such as Project Managers or Business Analysts etc. In my experience, once a company gets past 50 users or so, Windows is still the way to go. Sincerely hope they will donate to the OpenSSH project to support its ongoing development going forward and not just mooch off it as many other companies do.
- thrillgore 11y agoFinally, progress! I've moved to Mosh for all my personal needs, but SSH is a very important protocol and i'm optimistic to see how its implemented in PowerShell.
- grkvlt 11y agoThe actual MSDN blog entry's link should be used for this. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/looking_forward_microsoft__support_for_secure_shell_ssh1/archive/2015/06/02/managing-looking-forward-microsoft-support-for-secure-shell-ssh.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/looking_forward_microsoft__support_f...
- nailer 11y agoAgreed, but I think the OpenBSD people did well by saying 'SSH' in the main part of their title. 'Secure Shell' is like 'modes': you might use ssh or chmod every day but it takes one tick for people to realise what's meant.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- dredmorbius 11y agoOpenBSD are OpenSSH's developers, and this is the OpenBSD Journal's website. It's entirely appropriate for either party to the deal to announce it, or be linked on HN.
- thebouv 11y agoI think this is a good move. It'll be in the enterprise in .. 10 years?
- lessthunk 11y agowhy use MSFT in the first place? Really, it is 2015.
- protomyth 11y agoBecause many of us have to deal with required software that only runs on Windows, and there is no current alternative. It's 2015 and the Microsoft ecosystem is still very strong.
- matthewking 11y agoWhat reason do you have to avoid Microsoft? its 2015. Their past is behind them.
- astrodust 11y agoWindows is still Windows. SSH support is a step in the right direction, but they've got a mountain to climb: * The Registry. * Drive letters and associated anachronisms. * A sane service manager. * The Windows API in general.
- jodrellblank 11y agoAah, the registry. Isn't it nice not having everything in a MySQL database with a PHP interface which regenerates configure files over your hand edited hanged? Or GUIs like network manager that make config files that can't be edited because they can't track manual edits? A registry which gives a central place for configuration and enables group policies and central management? A registry which allows ACLs on individual keys and sub trees, not just at the level of files. A registry which has some notion of types. Isn't it also nice that MS moved on a bit from the notion of drive letters with powershell providers, allowing you to console edit registry locations, active directory OUs, certificate service paths, and whatever you want in a FUSE style pluggable way, while keeping the usefulness of drive letters and unc paths and not trying to pretend a network drive is a subset of / on a local computer. Linux environments don't even have a stable place to put SSL certificates or a stable format for them. Packages might use individual files, or a single concatenated file, or a Mozilla NSS database, might look in somewhere in /etc or need their own path configuring. It's a mess, even if it was standard and all the files were base64 text versions, it would still be useless for human editing with text tools because humans can't process big chunks of base64 usefully. A certificate store and a PSdrive provider for it. Neat.
- anacrolix 11y agoWhat year is it??!
- schnable 11y ago"those who do not understand UNIX are doomed to reimplement it, poorly" That described Windows for a long time, but seems like things are changing.
- lmm 11y agoI was running SSH from Microsoft on my Windows XP boxes, years ago, thanks to SFU (later SUA). Then Microsoft killed it.
- tedchs 11y agoHow are people controlling Windows servers remotely without SSH? Remote desktop only?
- ygra 11y agoRemote Desktop and/or PowerShell Remoting. The latter is a bitch to set up but once it's there it's every bit as flexible as SSH.
- ascendantlogic 11y agoI'm old enough to remember the Microsoft of the 90's and early 2000's. I'm not any more scared of them doing Embrace, Extend and Extinguish any more than I am of other large tech behemoths. Understand that altruism performed by any company of that size is entirely driven by profit motives. Don't assume they want to give everyone SSH hugs just because they're nice people now. But that also doesn't mean they're "evil" per se, just doing what makes sense in today's marketplace.
- tuan5 11y ago+1
- brettkc 11y agoGiving developers nice tools as a way to advance the brand is hard to call evil.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jaboutboul 11y agoI couldn't agree more. Everyone here with the tin foil hats is reading too much into it and also coming from a place of deep seated hate for anything Microsoft does. The fact is the industry has changed. Trends have shifted. Microsoft, especially now with Nadella running the show realize they can't dictate what developers need. If they want to stay relevant they needs to give the people what they want.
- rilita 11y agoWe could already run OpenSSH on Windows. I typically do via cygwin. It appears people are building it against MinGW? ( https://www.nomachine.com/AR05H00563 https://www.nomachine.com/AR05H00563 ) If we can already build Windows binaries of OpenSSH, why does it matter if Microsoft begins to offer that also? Is Microsoft going to provide full source for their build process? If they don't, would it be a good idea to even use it?