Connecting by SSH through PuTTY

Author: Eoin Joy

On Windows, you can use PuTTY to SSH to a server.

• By default you can enter an IP address in the “Host Name (or IP Address)” field and click open and you will be prompted in the CLI for a username to connect as and that user's password.

• These usernames and passwords can be found in the password safe currently located in the following folder: Errigal Shared Documents\Team\

• Usually the server's host name (e.g. atlas.err) is entered, and the name is resolved by the DNS.

• It is optional but helpful to enter <username>@<hostname> in the host name field as it is rare to log in as multiple users per server, in this case you would log in as the user scotty.

• Setting can be saved and loaded as profiles and the list of profiles can be searched by entering text into the Saved Sessions field.

• The first time you connect to a given host, you must accept that host's rsa2 key as verification of the server's identity.

• For some servers (e.g. an Amazon EC2 instance) it is necessary to use a ppk file or a pem file as a private key for an extra layer of authentication on connecting to the server. (PuTTY uses .ppk)

These keys are found in the following folders:

Errigal Shared Documents\Amazon EC2\dev keys\ or Errigal Shared Documents\Amazon EC2\prod keys\

• To know which key to use, if not named directly after the server you are connecting to, log in to the AWS console, https://aws.amazon.com/console/

• Click on EC2, Intances, and you will be presented with the listings of the instances, which have a key name value telling you which key to use.