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Linux hints for Windows users

Our colleague Peter Küffner shares a few notes about avoiding issues that Windows users have, when trying out Ubuntu (e.g. by setting up a Ubuntu VM):

SSH/SFTP access

  • In order to be able to use PuTTY and FileZilla with Ubuntu, you need to install the openssh-server package via apt-get. This can be done via

    sudo apt-get install openssh-server

  • No adjustments to the Firewall should be required after the installation. (Just note that you can't log in as root user.)

  • You can connect to the Ubuntu using FileZilla via SFTP with the username/password you use to log in there.
    You need to explicitly specify that in the URL. e.g. with sftp://10.0.0.1/

Getting GitHub access working

  • You need your private SSH key on the machine.
  • Then SSH key needs to be in OpenSSH format (not PuTTY's ppk). You can use PuTTYgen to convert your PPK key into OpenSSH format (Conversions menu).
    Note: OpenSSH "private key" files don't have an extension. "Public key" files end with .pub.
  • You can transfer the key to the Ubuntu system. Copy it into /home/<user>/.ssh/. The file should be named id_rsa (for "ssh-rsa" keys) if you don't want to do additional configuration.

  • The id_rsa file MUST have the its file permissions set to -rw------- (i.e. only the user itself is allowed to access the file). You can use the command chmod 600 id_rsa while in the .ssh folder in order to set the permissions.

    Warning

    The SSH agent will refuse to accept the key when its file permissions are not set properly!