How to Use a New Windows Terminal App for Ssh? [Closed]

Question

The Windows Terminal app is advertised as a central hub for all terminal work, so I'm interested in a way to bring my SSH connections into it and replace ancient PuTTY.

Accepted Answer

You can use a commandline field in your profile configuration to initiate an SSH connection on tab creation.

Step-by-step guide:

Ensure you have an SSH client (try to connect to the server from a Command Prompt tab). @dhgouveia2's post details this step.
Open Settings (Ctrl+,)
Find the "list" array in the "profiles" object
Find a Command Prompt profile ("commandline": "cmd.exe")
Duplicate the profile (copy-paste the whole object, watch for the comma between objects)
Change the "guid" value to a new GUID (for example, from here)
Change the commandline value to "commandline" : "ssh me@my-server -p 22 -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa" (use your own connection command).
Change the profile's "name"
Add an "icon" : "ms-appx:///ProfileIcons/{9acb9455-ca41-5af7-950f-6bca1bc9722f}.png" item to use a Tux icon (default icons are here)

You should have something like this:

{
    "$schema": "",
    "profiles":
    {
        "list":
        [
            // ...
            {
                "guid": "{1d43c510-93e8-4960-a18b-e432641e0930}",
                "name": "ssh my-server",
                "icon" : "ms-appx:///ProfileIcons/{9acb9455-ca41-5af7-950f-6bca1bc9722f}.png",
                "commandline": "ssh me@my-server -p 22 -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa"
            }
        ]
    }
}

Save the configuration and enjoy the new item in the New Tab drop-down.

Answer 2

You can use native ssh client from Windows 10,

From powershell

Get-WindowsCapability -Online | ? Name -like 'OpenSSH*'

# This should return the following output:

Name  : OpenSSH.Client~~~~0.0.1.0
State : NotPresent
Name  : OpenSSH.Server~~~~0.0.1.0
State : NotPresent

Install the OpenSSH Client

Add-WindowsCapability -Online -Name OpenSSH.Client~~~~0.0.1.0

It should return the following output:

Path          :
Online        : True
RestartNeeded : False

Uninstall the OpenSSH Client

Remove-WindowsCapability -Online -Name OpenSSH.Client~~~~0.0.1.0

Add the hosts to your ssh config file

From your home folder, go to the .ssh/config file, the folder may not exist if the ssh application has not been used, so it will be necessary to create it on you home folder

C:\Users\%USERPROFILE%\.ssh

@Damo post a very good documentation about the ssh config.

e.g config

Host test
    User test
    HostName 127.0.0.1
    Port 22
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Windows Terminal

Similar to the @Himura instructions, but instead of using "bash.exe" you will using "ssh.exe".

For connection to the remote host, you can use the hostname from file e.g ssh.exe test, if you don't want to use a config file, you can use the user@ip ssh.exe test@127.0.0.1 and the password dialog will be promt

Edit your profile.json from the settings on Windows Terminal,
Duplicate a profile
Change the "guid" value to a new GUID
Change the commandline value with ssh.exe, e.g "commandline" : "ssh.exe test"
Change the profile's "name"

e.g

C:\Users\%USERPROFILE%\.ssh\config

Host vagrant
    Hostname 127.0.0.1
    Port 2222
    User vagrant
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/vagrant.key

profile.json

    ...
    {
        "acrylicOpacity" : 0.75,
        "closeOnExit" : true,
        "colorScheme" : "One Half Dark",
        "commandline" : "ssh.exe vagrant",
        "cursorColor" : "#FFFFFF",
        "cursorShape" : "bar",
        "fontFace" : "DejaVu Sans Mono for Powerline",
        "fontSize" : 10,
        "guid" : "{1777cdf0-b2c4-5a63-a204-1111f349ea7c}",
        "historySize" : 9001,
        "icon" : "ms-appx:///ProfileIcons/{9acb9455-ca41-5af7-950f-6bca1bc9722f}.png",
        "name" : "Vagrant",
        "padding" : "0, 0, 0, 0",
        "snapOnInput" : true,
        "startingDirectory" : "%USERPROFILE%",
        "useAcrylic" : true
  }
  ....

If you want to set the new entry as default, search for the defaultProfile key

....
   "globals" : 
    {
        "alwaysShowTabs" : true,
        "copyOnSelect" : false,
        "defaultProfile" : "{1777cdf0-b2c4-5a63-a204-1111f349ea7c}",
        "initialCols" : 120,
        "initialRows" : 30,
....

Answer 3

If you want to stay in the terminal and easily manage all your ssh connections inside WSL then i would recommend using the built in ssh config management in the ssh command.

Basically you put all your different ssh configurations in to the file ~/.ssh/config

There is a good post documenting the basic use of this here

Hope this helps.

Answer 4

If you want to connect to a machine on Google Compute Engine using Windows Terminal, you can write a script to replace the default command and use ssh instead of putty.exe. More details here.