Scott Hanselman

In working on getting Remote debugging with VS Code on Windows to a Raspberry Pi using .NET Core on ARM in my last post, I was looking for optimizations and realized that I was using plink/putty for my SSH tunnel. Putty is one of those tools that we (as developers) often take for granted, but ideally I could do stuff like this without installing yet another tool. Being able to use out of the box tools has a lot of value.

A friend pointed out this part where I'm using plink.exe to ssh into the remote Linux machine to launch the VS Debugger:

"pipeTransport": {
    "pipeCwd": "${workspaceFolder}",
    "pipeProgram": "${env:ChocolateyInstall}\\bin\\PLINK.EXE",
    "pipeArgs": [
        "-pw",
        "raspberry",
        "root@crowpi.lan"
    ],
    "debuggerPath": "/home/pi/vsdbg/vsdbg"
}

I could use Linux/bash that's built into Windows 10 for years now. As you may know, Windows 10 can run many Linuxes out of the box. If I have a Linux distro configured, I can call Linux commands locally from CMD or PowerShell. For example, here you see I have three Linuxes and one is the default. I can call "wsl" and any command line is passed in.

C:\Users\scott> wslconfig /l
Windows Subsystem for Linux Distributions:
Ubuntu-18.04 (Default)
WLinux
Debian
C:\Users\scott> wsl ls ~/
forablog  forablog.2  forablog.2.save  forablog.pub  myopenaps  notreal  notreal.pub  test.txt

So theoretically I could "wsl ssh" and use that Linux's ssh, but again, requires setup and it's a little silly. Windows 10 now supports OpenSSL already!

Open an admin PowerShell to see if you have it installed. Here I have the client software installed but not the server.

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

Name  : OpenSSH.Client~~~~0.0.1.0
State : Installed

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

You can then add the client (or server) with this one-time command:

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

You'll get all the standard OpenSSH stuff that one would want.

Let's say now that I want to be able to ssh (shoosh!) into a remote Linux machine using PGP keys rather than with a password. It's much more convenient and secure. I'll be ssh'ing with my Windows SSH into a remote Linux machine. You can see where ssh is installed:

C:\Users\scott>where ssh
C:\Windows\System32\OpenSSH\ssh.exe

Level set - What are we doing and what are we trying to accomplish?

I want to be able to type "ssh pi@crowpi" from my Windows machine and automatically be logged in.

I will

• Make a key on my Window machine. The FROM. I want to ssh FROM here TO the Linux machine.
• Tell the Linux machine (by transferring it over) about the public piece of my key and add it to a specific user's allowed_keys.
• PROFIT

Here's what I did. Note you can do this is several ways. You can gen the key on the Linux side and scp it over, you can use a custom key and give it a filename, you can use a password as you like. Just get the essence right.

Below, note that when the command line is C:\ I'm on Windows and when it's $ I'm on the remote Linux machine/Raspberry Pi.

• gen the key on Windows with ssh-keygen
• I ssh'ed over to Linux and note I'm prompted for a password, as expected.
• I "ls" to see that I have a .ssh/ folder. Cool. You can see authorized_keys is in there, you may or may no have this file or folder. Make the ~/.ssh folder if you don't.
• Exit out. I'm in Windows now.
• Look closely here. I'm "scott" on Windows so my public key is in c:\users\scott\.ssh\id_rsa.pub. Yours could be in a file you named earlier, be conscious.
• I'm type'ing (cat on Linux is type on Windows) that text file out and piping it into SSH where I login that remote machine with the user pi and I then cat (on the Linux side now) and append >> that text to the .ssh/authorized_keys folder. The ~ folder is implied but could be added if you like.
• Now when I ssh pi@crowpi I should NOT be prompted for a password.

Here's the whole thing.

C:\Users\scott\Desktop> ssh-keygen
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (C:\Users\scott/.ssh/id_rsa):
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in C:\Users\scott/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in C:\Users\scott/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
SHA256:x2vJHHXwosSSzLHQWziyx4II+scott@IRONHEART
The key's randomart image is:
+---[RSA 2048]----+
|  .   ....  .    |
|..+.  .=+=.  o   |
|   ..            |
+----[SHA256]-----+
C:\Users\scott\Desktop> ssh pi@crowpi
pi@crowpi's password:
Linux crowpi 2018 armv7l

pi@crowpi:~ $ ls .ssh/
authorized_keys  id_rsa  id_rsa.pub  known_hosts
pi@crowpi:~ $ exit
logout
Connection to crowpi closed.
C:\Users\scott\Desktop> type C:\Users\scott\.ssh\id_rsa.pub | ssh pi@crowpi 'cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys'
pi@crowpi's password:
C:\Users\scott\Desktop> ssh pi@crowpi
pi@crowpi: ~ $ 

Fab. At this point I could go BACK to my Windows' Visual Studio Code launch.json and simplify it to NOT use Plink/Putty and just use ssh and the ssh key management that's included with Windows.

"pipeTransport": {
    "pipeCwd": "${workspaceFolder}",
    "pipeProgram": "ssh",
    "pipeArgs": [
        "pi@crowpi.lan"
    ],
    "debuggerPath": "/home/pi/vsdbg/vsdbg"
}

Cool!

NOTE: In my previous blog post some folks noted I am logging in as "root." That's an artifact of the way that .NET Core is accessing the GPIO pins. That won't be like that forever.

Thoughts? I hope this helps someone.

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About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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