Installing and using SSH

The secure shell client referred to in these instructions is free client software for non-commercial use only. It is illegal to use this software for commercial purposes.

The software is available to download from the company's site at http://www.ssh.com/support/downloads/secureshellwks/non-commercial.html, NMSU-A's site at /computer/SSHSecureShellClient-3.2.9.exe or may be copied to CD, Zip disk or thumbdrive from J:\pub\secureshell on the local network as shown:

To install the secure shell client software on your office computer, navigate to the location you downloaded to or the device you copied the file to and double-click the SSHSecureShellClient-3.2.9 icon to begin setup. Installation is very easy, you will be guided right through it by following the on-screen prompts.

Once the client is installed, there will be two icons on your desktop that look like these: .

The first icon is for starting up the shell (telnet replacement) portion of the software. The shell is used to remotely log into the server and issue commands such as the "passwd" command to change your password. Most users will rarely need to use this. Most users only need to use the "shell" if they are learning the Unix/Linux Operating System or doing some programming on the Linux system.

The second icon is for starting up the File Transfer (FTP replacement) portion of the software. This is what you will use to transfer files back and forth to/from the server. Another function that is available with this software that was not available with normal FTP is the ability to open a file directly from the server. This will be explained further later in this tutorial.

To begin using the file transfer client, double click on the SSH Secure File Transfer Client icon. A window will open that looks like:

To make a connection to the server, click on the "Quick Connect" button which will open this dialog:

Enter your password in the password dialog box that comes up, then click OK on the "Enter your authentication response" to complete the login process.

Note the small "Add profile" window as shown:

Entering a name and clicking on the "Add to Profile" button will save the settings so that next time, instead of using the "Quick Connect" button, you can select your profile from the list using the "Profiles" button.

There is also an option there to edit profiles. Choosing this option will open a window where you can change many options for your profile. There is also an entry there where you can set default values for the "Quick Connect" option making it even quicker and thus more useful.

Once you are properly connected, the remote files window is available to simply drag and drop files to/from the window into a "My Computer" or "Explorer" window on your PC.

Another feature I discovered by accident is that you can open files directly from this window. Double-clicking a file in that window will open the file with the application associated with the file. For instance, (my accident) by double-clicking on a .mdb file will open the file using MicroSoft Access.

The file is actually downloaded into a temporary storage space on your hard drive and can be uploaded each time you save the file. Among the options (Edit->Settings), there is an option (File Transfer->Advanced->Upload after modifying remote files) to automatically upload changes to the file always (Yes), never (No), or Ask.

For users that may use the shell portion of the software, a useful setting that you may want to make is in the options to edit profiles. Select the tab for "Keyboard" where you will find a checkbox, "Backspace sends Delete" which makes the backspace key work as you’d expect. Unix/Linux shells normally treat the delete and backspace keys differently than Windows does.