How to configure Windows Vista as ssh server – part 1

Setting up any system as a server requires two things :

1.Installing the particular service on system
2.Configuring the service post installation so that the system acts as server.

SSH (secure shell)is a remote login protocol that encrypts data between communicating machines.It is originally used in Unix machines but we can use the same on Windows.

I will demonstrate the use of a free software Cygwin to configure a Vista box as a SSH server.

This post will be of 2 parts :

1.Installing ssh services on Vista.
2.Configuring ssh after installation.

Part I :

Installing Cygwin on Vista

Get the setup of Cygwin from here.
To get Cygwin running,administrator rights will be needed.Copy the setup file downloaded in a folder (like C:cygwin_setup),double click the exe after that.

This will bring us to the setup wizard for Cygwin,keep defaults and continue till the page that asks for packages that need to be installed.

Since we are interested only in ssh,Cygwin has a package openssh under Net section.Drill down to Net and select openssh package.

The selected package alongwith base packages for Cygwin will be downloaded (the default directory where it will be installed is C:Cygwin,it can be changed from setup screen if required).

Installation will kick off with packages getting downloaded (this may take a while for slow internet connections).

Once complete,the installation complete screen will pop up.

Now we configure ssh on Vista in part 2 of this post.