Saint Aardvark's Journal: SSHD on Windows 2000? Surely you jest!

So I'm at my new job (first job as a sysadmin...I'm so happy) and someone asks me if I can get an SSH server working on their machine. No big deal, right? I mean, everyone's running FreeBSD, right? Wrong: the computer this guy's talking about is running Windows 2000.

But I google, and fuck me if I don't come across instructions for running an OpenSSH server on Cygwin. Now don't get me wrong, I'd tried Cygwin before and had been very, very impressed w/the idea of running VI under W2K. But SSH? Cazart!

The instructions above were almost complete. But we've got a domain going (on Samba, natch), and the guy couldn't touch his files while logged in as Administrator. (I know, I know, shouldn't log in as Admin...but somehow it's hard to see that as being as bad as logging in as root...)

So some more google and came up with this. THe important bit is to change the GECOS field as suggested.

But: but but but: the other important bit is to start with a clean cygwin install. Follow the instructions hrere if need be. I banged my head against this long and painfully until I got it right.

On another note, I'm a Unix guy and I'm quite happy with that. But I've been thrust into W2K admin, and I find myself uncomforatably ignorant. One of the things I've always loved about Linux, FreeBSD et. al. is the sheer embarrassment of resources for the newbie. Where, o where are an equivalent humiliation of knowledge for Windows newbies? There has to be something out there for the technically proficient yet unfamiliar new guy. Bueller? Bueller?

Heh

[Arker]

Hmm sounds like it would have been quicker and less trouble to wipe his machine and put bsd on it. ;)

Re:Heh

[Saint Aardvark]

Yeah, I know. But he's a developer, and some of the tools he needs to use are only available for Windows, so Windows it is. They're command-line tools, though, so Cygwin is perfect: SSH and shell scripting.

What are the virtues of a clean Cygwin (re)install

[Lumpish Scholar]

...the other important bit is to start with a clean cygwin install

What happens if you don't?

I'm a long time Cygwin user, and love it. On my current work system, I'm using an inherited Cygwin installation. I've thought about un-installing and re-installing it from scratch, but I wasn't sure what benefits I might see?

How did it help you?

Re:What are the virtues of a clean Cygwin (re)inst

[Saint Aardvark]

When I didn't start out w/a clean install (getting Cygwin's setup tool to delete everything, renaming c:\cygwin, deleting registry keys), I was unable to register SSHD as a service using cygrunsrv: I kept getting "error 1067" (or some number like that; don't have my notes in front of me) that, when I googled, turned out to be this big, mysterious problem that lots and lots of people had. When I did do a clean install, it just worked (though it took me a few tries to get the exact sequence right).

Strange

Re:What are the virtues of a clean Cygwin (re)inst

[moonpickle]

What I think you got wrong was not adding enough foo. And cheese. Did you add cheese?

And it's absolutely correct that a Windows Service approximates a network daemon. It will start, listen and report back to you. But don't trust what it says: some windows daemons are rilly rilly uncooperative. Like the ones in LoTR.