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I'm looking for a very basic OpenSSH client for Windows. It should be 100% command-line so that I may run it from Console2. The only stipulation is that it should not be Cygwin-based. If possible, I would expect the command to look identical to how it is on *nix environments.

Example:

ssh [email protected]
scp myfile.txt [email protected]:~

Some rationale for my criteria:

  1. I have Console2 configured how I like it (Ctrl+v for paste, etc).
  2. I have UnxUtils added to my environment and SSH/SCP is a natural extension of that.
  3. I have very simple bash scripts that would automatically translate into .BAT format with the addition of these commands.
  4. Cygwin makes too many fundamental changes to the environment and certain Windows-centric tasks cannot easily be migrated to this environment, and I prefer to follow a standard approach for everything.
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    AFAIK putty can do that: putty.exe -ssh [email protected] to open an SSH session, and pscp.exe for the SCP part.
    – Izzy
    Commented Jan 3, 2016 at 1:37
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    @Izzy That should be an answer instead, it fulfills the requirements :D. In addition, Putty provides a 100% based console version (plink.exe).
    – Alejandro
    Commented Jan 3, 2016 at 3:17
  • Putty has poor encryption support though and would force your server to use weaker encryption to be compatible.
    – Tanath
    Commented Jan 5, 2016 at 22:13
  • @Tanath do you have documentation to back that up?
    – James Watkins
    Commented Jan 6, 2016 at 16:45
  • Did you try looking it up? It hasn't supported chacha20-poly1305 or curve25519, but looks like they added them recently in current snapshots (should be coming to 0.67 then): chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/wishlist It also only generates weaker keys, using RSA & DSA.
    – Tanath
    Commented Jan 7, 2016 at 1:07

2 Answers 2

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PuTTY can do that. While its GUI is relatively well-known, it also offers a command-line: you can use plink to initiate an SSH session, and pscp to copy files over SSH/SCP. Without any parameters given, they will show you a short help screen with available options. Their basic use is similar to OpenSSH:

# copy files via SCP
pscp [email protected]:/etc/hosts c:\temp\example-hosts.txt
pscp c:\documents\foo.txt [email protected]:/tmp/foo

# Login to a remote server
plink -ssh login.example.com
plink root@myserver

PuTTY is the quasi-standard for this on Windows and thus has been forked multiple times. It's known to be reliable and stable.

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Update 12/2017:

OpenSSH client and server is shipped with latest Windows 10 update so you do not need any of this, just update your system and you will have OpenSSH installed:

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/2017/12/15/using-the-openssh-beta-in-windows-10-fall-creators-update-and-windows-server-1709/

OpenSSH has been recently ported to Windows by PowerShell team. It is available on GitHub. The installation is pretty straight-forward and most of the things work as on *nix.

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  • That looks more like an SSH server, not a client.
    – James Watkins
    Commented Jan 3, 2016 at 20:06
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    it is openssh, so it is both. You don't have to run the server part.
    – Jakuje
    Commented Jan 3, 2016 at 20:06
  • Looks like it requires Cygwin? github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/wiki/…
    – James Watkins
    Commented Jan 4, 2016 at 21:10
  • So my bad. I was hoping that MS was able to achieve something more than is available already.
    – Jakuje
    Commented Jan 4, 2016 at 21:38
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    @JamesWatkins No longer. The page you sourced is outdated now.
    – Franklin Yu
    Commented Dec 22, 2017 at 21:12

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