Comments on: SSHing into a Windows Server on Amazon’s EC2

By: John Hart

John Hart — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 01:16:53 +0000

That update_cygwin script does a lot of stuff, making me suspect is is brittle. We went the AutoExNT route suggested above but found a much simpler implementation: we use AutoExNT to run ssh-host-config at startup if the service isn’t already running. AutoExNT’s batch file checks the instance’s user-data and, if desired, runs this bash script:

if ! cygrunsrv -Q sshd; then
ssh-host-config -y -c ntsec -w
net start sshd
fi

As a matter of hygiene we don’t run this script on our AMI source instances – in other words, our AMI source image lineage never has sshd turned on. Instead, the above script is only run on production instances that are launched from our rebundled AMIs but which are not themselves destined to be rebundled.

To circle back, that’s where checking user-data comes in – to decide whether or not to run ssh-host-config. However, I do believe the above solution works even if you’re working off an AMI that itself had run ssh-host-config previously, but we don’t do it as a matter of course. YMMV.

By: Eitan Burcat

Eitan Burcat — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 12:16:11 +0000

Update: we decided to abandon SSHding into machines, we had too many problems with cygwin – probably it’s still not ready for production in virtualized machines.
Update 2: Instead of autoexnt we now use group policy to auto start applications on machine loading.
Update 3: Bundling might not be that problematic anymore, with EBS machines.

By: Shlomo

Shlomo — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 09:07:46 +0000

Thanks for this writeup. Big help.

I can’t believe it requires so many manual steps (click, turn off IE warning, click again, turn off another IE warning, repeat ad nauseum) to be able to make an AMI that whose sshd works!

By: Eitan Burcat

Eitan Burcat — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 07:30:39 +0000

I use both of them as clients, what was challenging is to install an SSH server that could accept their connections on the EC2 machines…

By: Roman

Roman — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:54:03 +0000

Have you looked at PuTTY and WinSCP?

By: sergio

sergio — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 05:27:28 +0000

Looks like The Resource Kit is not supported on 64bit platforms. Any alternatives to AutoExNT ?

By: Eitan Burcat

Eitan Burcat — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:06:37 +0000

By: Mike Darnell

Mike Darnell — Sun, 31 May 2009 09:11:15 +0000

I spent some time yesterday SSHing my niece.
She’s eight months old and gets cranky if she doesn’t get her nap time.

Does the Green Party Meymad know you’ve associated their logo with your occult geekish texts?

Cheers,
Mike