Why the "new way"?

As I have written in my previous article about SSH from Windows before Windows 10 (build 1809) there was no nice and build a way to access SSH.

The assumptions

I do assume the basic knowledge of how to operate the Command line (also called CLI).

What are keys, a very simplified explanation.

First, let's try to explain what is the key. The key is pair of very long numbers which are related to each other. The idea works like that. The simpler number also called the public key, is shared with everyone. The public key can be used in two ways. The first is to encrypt the message, such a message can only be decrypted by the private key( the second more complex one). The second way is to decrypt the message, encrypted with the private key.

Both keys can be used in various ways, but the basic idea is that owner of the private key can confirm the identity of himself/herself by encrypting/decrypting messages.

Generate the key

In the terminal please run the command:

ssh-keygen

The command will kick-start start key generation process.

The ssh-keygen will create two files, example_key and example_key.pub. The latter one is the public key, this file has to be shared with any server you would like to login to later on. The first one is the private key, and as such should never be shared with anyone. Additional pleas always generate the passphrase for a key as the additional line of protection.

Connect to a machine

As SSH is already installed you just need to start a terminal and you can use the command:

shh -i "C:\Users\<your user name>\.ssh\<private key generated by openssh>" root@<host or IP>

Save connection for later

The easier way for managing connection I have found and am using now is to create the cmd files inside the path-enabled folder so the command can be executed for any place inside the terminal.

CD $HOME
MKDIR bin
'@echo off
ssh -i "C:\Users\<your user name>\.ssh\<private key generated by openssh>" root@<host or IP>' > ssh-test.cmd

After that, you can use the ssh-test from any path in the terminal.