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Downloading and Installing WinSCP. Download the WinSCP Installation package.; Run the WinSCP Installer as you would any other Windows program. When prompted, choose Typical installation as the Setup type.; When prompted, choose Explorer as the preferred user interface option. If you are used to Norton Commander (used by several contemporary file managers like Total Commander, FAR,. May 08, 2014  Hi All, My users are reporting, they were not able to see their local drives in the winscp client in xenapp 6.5, as they were able to see the drives in xenapp 5.0 previously. Enclosed the screenshot, can you anyone advise me why the local drives are not displaying in winscp.

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WinSCP is a free, open source file transfer program written for Microsoft Windows. It implements several file transfer protocols, most notably SFTP via SSH. This tool allows you to securely transfer files to and from your Linode using an encrypted channel, avoiding the security problems and usability issues inherent in traditional FTP client/server systems. WinSCP sends both your login credentials and file transfers over the network securely encrypted, while standard FTP clients send this information as plaintext.

You’ll need to make sure your Linode is running an SSH daemon (all Linodes run an OpenSSH server by default), and that you have a user account on the server before following these instructions. You may wish to verify that you can log into your Linode via SSH using a tool like the PuTTY SSH client before continuing.

Obtaining and Installing WinSCP

You can obtain the software from the WinSCP download page. Click the link for “Installation package” and save the file to your desktop. After downloading the installer, double-click its icon to launch it. You will be presented with the WinSCP setup wizard; please click “Next” to continue.

You’ll be prompted to accept the license agreement for WinSCP (GPL v2 licensed as of this writing). There may be additional license agreements included as well, depending on whether the installer includes support for installing third party applications. Should you be asked if you would like to install any such third party applications alongside WinSCP, you are not required to do so to use WinSCP. Read the displayed license(s), and click “Next” if you agree to the terms presented.

When presented with the option to perform a typical or custom installation, most users will choose the default selection (typical). Click “Next” to continue.

When presented with a choice between “Commander” or “Explorer” interface styles, most users will want to choose the default selection (Commander).

After clicking “Continue” once more, the program should be installed. You’ll be given an opportunity to allow the installer to launch WinSCP for you.

Once launched, you’ll be presented with a screen similar to the following:

Enter your Linode’s fully qualified hostname or IP address in the “Host name” field. Unless you’ve modified your system to run your SSH server on a non-standard port, leave “Port number” as the default (port 22). Enter your Linux username and password in the next two fields. Click “Login” to begin your session.

You’ll need to specify account credentials that have access to the filesystem location you’d like to transfer files to and/or from on your Linode; in this case, we’ve specified the “root” user, which has administrative access to the system. It’s advisable to create separate user accounts on your system in lieu of using “root” for common tasks; you can learn more about Linux/UNIX users and groups in our users and groups tutorial.

If you haven’t previously logged into your Linode from this workstation with WinSCP, you’ll be presented with a warning dialog similar to the following:

In this case, WinSCP is asking you to verify that the server you’re logging into is who it says it is. This is due to the possibility that someone could be eavesdropping on your connection, posing as the server you are trying to log into. You need some “out of band” method of comparing the key fingerprint presented to WinSCP with the fingerprint of the public key on the server you wish to log into. You may do so by logging into your Linode via the Lish console (see the “Console” tab in the Linode Manager) and executing the following command:

The key fingerprints should match; click “Yes” to accept the warning and cache this host key in the registry. You won’t receive further warnings unless the key presented to WinSCP changes for some reason; typically, this should only happen if you reinstall the remote server’s operating system. If you should receive this warning again from a system you already have the host key cached on, you should not trust the connection and investigate matters further.

Once you’ve accepted the host key, you’ll be presented with a dual-pane session window similar to the following:

You can navigate your local filesystem in the left view pane, while your Linode’s filesystem is displayed on the right side. You may copy files between the two systems by simply dragging and dropping them between the panes. Congratulations, you’re now able to visually manage your remote filesystem using WinSCP!

You may wish to consult the following resources for additional information on this topic. While these are provided in the hope that they will be useful, please note that we cannot vouch for the accuracy or timeliness of externally hosted materials.

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This guide is published under a CC BY-ND 4.0 license.

PuTTYgen is a key generator tool for creating pairs of public and private SSH keys. It is one of the components of the open-source networking client PuTTY. Although originally written for Microsoft Windows operating system, it is now officially available for multiple operating systems including macOS, Linux. PuTTYgen.exe is the graphical tool on Windows OS. While on the other side, Linux OS has the only command-line version could be accessible using SSH commands.

• 1 Download PuTTYgen
  • 1.1 Download PuTTYgen on Windows
  • 1.2 Download PuTTYgen for Mac
  • 1.3 Download PuTTYgen for Ubuntu/Linux
    • 1.3.3 Types of Keys Supported on PuTTYgen

Puttygen aka Putty Key Generator

The key generation utility – PuTTYgen can create various public-key cryptosystems including Rivest–Shamir–Adleman (RSA), Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA), Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA), and Edwards-curve Digital Signature Algorithm (EdDSA) keys.

The aforementioned public-key cryptosystems principally focus on secure data transmission and digital signatures.

Although PuTTYgen collects keys in its native file format i.e. .ppk files, the keys can easily be converted to any file format. For Windows, the software interface is PuTTYgen.exe, whereas, for Linux OS the command-line adaptation is available using SSH commands.

How to use PuTTYgen?

PuTTYgen is used to generate public or private key pair for creating SSH keys. Below is the complete guidance about how to generate RSA key in the Windows operating system:

1. Once you install the PuTTY on your machine, you can easily run PuTTYgen. For the same, go to Windows -> Start Menu -> All Programs -> PuTTY -> PuTTYgen.
2. You will see the PuTTY key generator dialog box on your screen
3. You will find a “Generate” button in that dialog. Clicking on it will lead to generating the keys for you.
4. Now you will need to add a unique key passphrase in the Key passphrase and Confirm passphrase field.
5. Click on the “Save Public Key” and “Save Private Key” buttons to save your public and private keys.
6. You will see the text starting with ssh-RSA in the Public key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys file field which is located at the top of the window. Copy that entire text to your clipboard by pressing ctrl+c as you will require the key to paste on your clipboard in the public key tool of control panel or directly on the cloud server.

Various Ways to Use RSA Key Pair

RSA key pair generated through PuTTYgen is used in two various ways defined as below:

1. To assign while creating a new cloud server
   You can choose the public key from the given list of keys at the time of creating a cloud server. If you don’t find your key in that list, then first add and then assign it.
2. Assign to an existing cloud server
   At the time of connecting to the cloud server, first of all, you need to tell PuTTY to use it for utilizing your newly created RSA key pair.

PuTTYgen being a component of the terminal emulator PuTTY does not have to be downloaded separately, hence, comes with the PuTTY .msi installation package. You can follow the simple steps to download PuTTYgen software for your system. That is the reason why you don’t need to download PuTTYgen separately. Once you download PuTTY software, you will be able to install and run PuTTYgen easily in no time. Below is the complete instruction about how to download and install PuTTY on Windows.

Apart from that, it is also integrated into third-party programs such as WinSCP installation package. Below you can find a complete PuTTYgen download and installation guide for all operating systems.

Download PuTTYgen on Windows

To download PuTTYgen the primary requisite is to acquire the copy of PuTTY installation package. For the 64-bit operating system, one must install the 64-bit version of PuTTY, i.e. putty-64bit-<version>-installer.msi.Similarly, for the 32-bit operating system, the respective 32-bit version of PuTTY, i.e. putty-<version>-installer.msi needs to be installed.

To get PuTTY, go to PuTTY Installation Download page, whereby the complete installation package will be available with setup instructions, installation guide, and download links to all other components of PuTTY such as putty.exe, pscp.exe, psftp.exe, puttytel.exe, plink.exe, pageant.exe and putty.zip.

Following the successful download of the PuTTY installation package. It is time to install the program. Go to How to install PuTTY on Windows, whereby you will find the step by step guidance for PuTTY installation for Windows operating system.

After successfully downloading and installing PuTTY on your Windows machine, you are just 2-3 clicks away to run PuTTYgen. Follow the below-given step by step guidance to run PuTTYgen:

Run PuTTYgen on Windows

To run PuTTYgen, Go to Windows -> Start Menu -> All Programs -> PuTTY -> PuTTYgen. You will see a window for the PuTTY Key Generator on your screen.

Voila! Now you can generate public or private key pair using PuTTYgen.

Download PuTTYgen for Mac

Below is the detailed guide to download PuTTYgen on Mac operating system. Mac OS has a built-in command-line SSH client known as Terminal. To utilize it, go to Finder and then opt for Go -> utilities from the top menu. After that find the terminal which supports SSH connections to remote servers.

However, to run PuTTYgen for mac, the first one must have to install PuTTY. There are multiple ways to install PuTTY, which are Homebrew or MacPorts. Both alternatives will also install the command-line of adaptations of PuTTYgen.

Ported PuTTY for Mac

Mac has the port of PuTTY which can be installed in various ways described as below:

1. Installation using Homebrew:
   First, install the ‘brew command line’ Once installed use the below-given command to install PuTTY:-
   sudo brew install putty
   
2. Installation using MacPorts:
   First of all, one must install MacPorts and then use the command-line to install PuTTY. Here is the command to install PuTTY via MacPorts
   sudo port install putty
   Additionally, a user can also add a shortcut to the desktop by writing the following command line
   –cp /opt/local/bin/putty ~/Desktop/PuTTY

However, there is an alternative way to install PuTTY on Mac OS. Cyberduck is a widely used Mac OS SSH Client. Once PuTTY installed on the Mac OS, a user can convert PuTTY derived private key format to OpenSSH.

To convert the private key to standard PEM format, type the following command –

puttygen privatekey.ppk -O private-openssh -o privatekey.pem

You can also read the guide to convert .pem file to .ppk using puttygen.

Download PuTTYgen for Ubuntu/Linux

To download PuTTYgen for Ubuntu (Linux) operating system, a user to first install PuTTY. However, in some Linux distributions, the SSH key generation tool – PuTTYgen needs to be installed independently from the PuTTY client.

For example, Debian Linux requires the below-given code to install PuTTYgen:

sudo apt install putty-tools

Generate Key Pair for Authentication in Linux

To create the key pair for authentication in Linux use the below command:-

puttygen -t rsa -b 2048 -C 'user@host' -o keyfile.ppk

Various Command Line Options of PuTTY in Linux

Below are few important command line options in the Linux operating system for PuTTY:

PuTTYgen [-t keytype [-b bits] [-q] keyfile]
[-C new-comment] [-P]
[-O output-type -p -l -L]
[-o output-file]

Options:

1. Keyfile – It is the name of the existing key file to read at the time of changing the current key.
2. –t keytype – The command specifies the type of key to creating. Its acceptable values are RSA and dsa.rsa1.
3. -b bits – This command specifies a total number of bit in a particular key. 1024 is the perfect size for DSA key, while 2048 or 4096 are the perfect size for RSA keys.
4. –q – The command suppresses the message about progress at the time of key generation.
5. -C new-comment – The command will specify the comment to describe the key. It can be used for the new and/or existing key. Key operation is not affected by a comment. However, it is used to recognize the key owner, it’s not reliable completely as any value can be applied to it.
6. –P – Using the command will update the passphrase of a key. Passphrase helps to encrypt the private key. As passphrase can’t add or update on a command line, it prompts a new passphrase tool to alter it.
7. –old-passphrase-file – The old password of the key remains in this file. The command is used when the key is protected by a passphrase.
8. –new-passphrase file – This command prompts the new passphrase of the key. It comes in the action either at the time of generating a new key or while applying –P command to change the passphrase.
9. -O output-type – This command defines what to give in output. By default, the private key is the output.

Thus, above are the prominent commands of PuTTYgen in Linux operating system. Besides that, there are many other commands available to perform various tasks from the command prompt in Linux at flank speed.

Types of Keys Supported on PuTTYgen

It is important to know the types of key PuTTYgen supports prior to using it. Below are the key types that it currently supports for SSH-2 and SSH-1 protocol:-

• SSH-1 protocol:- For SSH-1 only supports one key i.e. Rivest–Shamir–Adleman (RSA)
• SSH-2 protocol: – SSH-2 supports multiple key types that include – Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA), Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) and Ed25519.

Windows Explorer Can't See The Key I Generated Winscp Free

The above description is a detailed brief on downloading and running PuTTYgen on all major operating systems. For further details please check the Download PuTTY page.