Having a remote Windows 2K server and needing access to it, I began weighing my options for a remote access solution. Terminal services wasn’t an option because of several firewall and packet shaper considerations wouldn’t allow it. I considered enabling telnet server but clear text is the devil. Needing a secure, low bandwidth solution I turned to SSH. I downloaded a demo of SSH server for Windows from ssh.com and thought I had found my solution. But, although it did give access via a command prompt and SFTP access, it didn’t allow for editing of files (think VI!). This simply wouldn’t work. After searching for while for a better option, I found an open source SSH server package by Network Simplicity based o­n openssh. Much better. But, although it did give more functionality, it still didn’t really allow for real file editing, so I found myself SFTP’ing down files, editing them locally, and SFTP’ing them back. It was just too clunky to live. Back to google. I found the holy grail of SSH server for Windows! It was Cygwin, a UNIX emulator based o­n Redhat, to run open ssh server. I’d been using it for years for various *nix based applications and never realized that it could be used in this capacity. It might as well be a Redhat box that you’re SSH’ing into with REAL file editing with VI! Woo Hoo! I found this tutorial, which made it very simple to enable Cygwin as a SSH server. Many kudos to the author!

This tutorial was obtained from http://tech.erdelynet.com/cygwin-sshd.html and is mirrored here as a convenience.

Use the following steps to successfully get OpenSSH working as a server:

1. Set up your environment for Cygwin. For NT 4 and Windows 2000, this is done by right-clicking o­n My Computer and choosing Properties. In NT4, it’s o­n the Environment tab. In Windows 2000, it’s the Environment Variables o­n the Advanced tab. Add the following setting to the System Environment:
   • CYGWIN = ntsec tty

   Append the following variable to contain the following:

   • Path : ;C:\Cygwin\bin

   Note that if you are NT/2K o­n FAT(32), the ntsec option for the CYGWIN variable won’t help you much. In these cases, just set CYGWIN to “tty”. (Note: Through email, I’ve been notified that having CYGWIN=ntsec actually does made a difference o­n FAT(32) systems. Geoffrey Hoo)

2. Download the Cygwin Setup Program into a temporary folder like C:\CygwinInstall.
3. Run “C:\CygwinInstall\Setup.exe“, choose ” Install from Internet “, choose a suitable mirror (I like “ftp://mirrors.rcn.net”).
4. Now choose the packages you want to install. Click o­n the “+” next to “Admin” to expand it. Click o­n the word “Skip” next to the word cygrunsrv to install the NT/Win2k/XP Cygwin Service Initiator. Install cygwin-doc from “Doc”, nano and/or vim from “Editors” and openssh from “Net”.
5. [Optional] After Setup is complete, I like to make a couple of changes to the default installation: – Download and install ftp://ftp.erdelynet.com/mike/cygwin/profile, ftp://ftp.erdelynet.com/mike/cygwin/sh_aliases into /etc. – Change the Cygwin icons so that, instead of pointing to cygwin.bat, they point to “c:\cygwin\bin\bash.exe –login -i” and start in “c:\cygwin\bin”