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Windows Server 2019 Includes OpenSSH

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Windows Server 2019 Includes OpenSSH

#171

Post by JoshTriplett »

brazzledazzle wrote: post #155
JoshTriplett wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This type of attitude isn't particularly helpful. And in any case: it's easy enough to learn Windows, but it gets a lot better when you put decent command-line tools on it. (Yes, I already know about PowerShell and don't need twelve replies advocating it as a revolutionary concept.)

This type of attitude isn’t terribly helpful either. Sorry if that came off as snarky but this one is near and dear to my heart. The reason you get twelve replies is because PowerShell is the answer to wanting a good shell and decent command line tools. Not perfect but it runs circles around typical ‘nix shells. It would be a bit like having a decent Ruby or Python-based shell on Linux and bemoaning the lack of a Win…

> The reason you get twelve replies is because PowerShell is the answer

...to a question not asked. No, really, I want Linux tools, and don't want PowerShell. When I want more than a shell, I want a real programming language, not a more powerful shell.

I appreciate that some people like PowerShell. But the answer to "no, not PowerShell" is not "let me tell you about why you want PowerShell anyway, you just don't understand".

> That said there’s a great case to be made for familiarity and experience

And simplicity.

Here's a closely related example. Back when there was more than one competing distributed version control system, there was "tla" (a predecessor to baz, which was a predecessor to bzr). tla had commands like "init-tree" (not "init"), "file-diffs" (not "diff"), "apply-changeset" (not "apply"), "make-branch" (not "branch"), a dozen commands for logs (not "log"), and so on. Perforce has similar problems.

And PowerShell has "Expand-Archive" (not "unzip" or "tar"), "Invoke-WebRequest" (not "wget" or "curl"), "Get-Unique" (aliased as "gu" but not "uniq" or "unique"), and so on. Brevity is a virtue in a tool used so frequently, and brevity is not lack of clarity. Unnecessary verbosity is often an obfuscation.

Re: Windows Server 2019 Includes OpenSSH

#172

Post by alexeldeib »

mgamache wrote: post #72
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, note that Windows 10 has the OpenSSH client , "ssh", but to my knowledge, does not include the ability to be an OpenSSH server . EDIT: 1803 build appparently can get OpenSSH Server running, but it's "a bit of work": https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/how-to-insta...

I am running this on AWS. It was a 30 minute exercise and it's only available on the 'core' AMI. This means there is no GUI even if you wanted one. I do like the ability to run regular CMD or PowerShell. I am experimenting with using SSH to automate deployments to Windows Server.

TIL there's an AWS Windows AMI that comes without a GUI. Another user in the thread was talking about the "default install" of Windows not containing a GUI; wonder if this is what they meant.

Re: Windows Server 2019 Includes OpenSSH

#173

Post by grumpydba »

jackfraser wrote: post #156
TimTheTinker wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's time for MS to develop a new ANSI/VT-compliant, text-oriented shell (to complement PowerShell, which is largely object- and API-oriented). There ought to be a default shell worth using on the other end when you ssh into a Windows server :) cmd.exe and DOS were both text-oriented but extremely buggy and inconsistent. Perhaps MS could just focus on providing a very bash-like language (perhaps even include…

Why would they do that when Powershell is literally that, but refined beyond what's commonly available on Linux? I'm not great with it yet, but it feels intuitively like a step forward to be able to pass objects around instead of spending so much of my time using awk-ward 40 year old tools to tease text out of various fields.

However it is far too verbose and without aliasing everything it's a big pain in the a to use.

Re: Windows Server 2019 Includes OpenSSH

#174

Post by pmontra »

slededit wrote: post #63
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has come a really long way recently towards moving to CLI-based management. Starting with Server 2016, the default installation method of Windows Server no longer includes most of the GUI (called the Desktop Experience), leaving you with a command prompt window in the middle of the screen instead. An even thinner version of Windows Server, Nano Server, is also available, and includes even less GUI, being mu…

They started on this in the late 2000s when I was an intern there. But there was a lot to untangle. It’s the biggest refactoring job you can imagine. A decade long effort. Back then they didn’t really understand the point of ssh though. They had a vision of remote management via .net RPC and powershell.

The point of ssh is that I can easily manage some Windows boxes from a Linux server.

A customer of mine fires up servers to run tasks on them. A few of those tasks are programs that unfortunately run only on Windows (the pain of updating those boxes!) I install ssh to be able to perform some basic operations on them and move files over sftp. Hopefully an integrated ssh server works better (issues with terminal, etc.)

I understand that this is not a scenario Microsoft would advocate in the past, but eventually Microsoft lost the war for servers so it's giving us interoperability tools now.

Re: Windows Server 2019 Includes OpenSSH

#175

Post by TimTheTinker »

jackfraser wrote: post #156
TimTheTinker wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's time for MS to develop a new ANSI/VT-compliant, text-oriented shell (to complement PowerShell, which is largely object- and API-oriented). There ought to be a default shell worth using on the other end when you ssh into a Windows server :) cmd.exe and DOS were both text-oriented but extremely buggy and inconsistent. Perhaps MS could just focus on providing a very bash-like language (perhaps even include…

Why would they do that when Powershell is literally that, but refined beyond what's commonly available on Linux? I'm not great with it yet, but it feels intuitively like a step forward to be able to pass objects around instead of spending so much of my time using awk-ward 40 year old tools to tease text out of various fields.

PowerShell is great for when you want to interact with Windows APIs (local and remote) and/or work with objects. I have no problem with using it for those purposes.

But terminals and the tooling around them have always revolved around text. My point is that since Microsoft is (a) including OpenSSH, (b) upgrading their terminal infrastructure to support VT100 and ANSI codes, and (c) investing in WSL, it would make make a lot of sense to add a Windows-native shell that is more text-oriented. Not because I hate working with objects and APIs, but because plain text ought to be the primary, first-class supported data format when working on a terminal.

PowerShell is great, but it's an object-oriented (not text-oriented) shell.

Re: Windows Server 2019 Includes OpenSSH

#176

Post by emteycz »

amazingman wrote: post #157
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft's GUI management tools were really good and generally very discoverable. IMO they were a much better way to manage an OS than cryptically named CLI programs and text files. And most of them worked remotely. And by comparison to modern software they can not even remotely be considered bloated. Every electron application ever made is larger than all of RSAT. Now of course they suck ass because MS has no idea…

Those cryptically named programs are scriptable, and those text files (including scripts) are easy to version and backup.

Windows was and is scriptable as well (but it must be said that you mostly had to discover it yourself, documentation was lacking)

Backup is done the other way around, you backup your configuration scripts

Re: Windows Server 2019 Includes OpenSSH

#177

Post by nojvek »

OpenSSH with powershell is such a great combo. I was very skeptical about powershell, but after writing many scripts I’m a convert. Powershell does so many things nicer than bash. It feels like a real programming language but still not loosing its scripting roots.

For running tests for a GUI application which requires us to spin thousands of Machines in parallel, manage job queues, interact with Windows UI automation, do some html result dumping, shell buffer streaming, and a whole bunch of crazy things, powershell interfaces with things really nicely.

I absolutely love that powershell pipes streams of objects rather than just streams of bytes. So much more expressive.

Re: Windows Server 2019 Includes OpenSSH

#178

Post by jodrellblank »

new12345 wrote: post #134
alkonaut wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were multiple ways to get non-GUI shells on remote machines before too. WinRm/WinRs and PowerShell are included out of the box.

Most of these alternatives are not installed on windows server for security/maintenance overhead reasons by IT administrators and developers are forced to live with slow and cumbersome RDP(not to mention zero capability for scripting) for accessing machines. Now that Microsoft has finally realized the importance of remote shell access for servers and has included it in OS by default, it will become convenient alterna…

WinRM / PS Remoting has been installed and enabled by default since Server 2012, and RDP disabled by default.

Re: Windows Server 2019 Includes OpenSSH

#179

Post by grumpydba »

curt15 wrote: post #36
emilfihlman wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows ux is better out of the box than on any Linux so far, it's really polished. The office suite is also much better than alternatives. So just switching the kernel to Linux would be enough and super winrar.

Does Linux have the equivalent of WinNT's i/o completion ports to prevent heavy I/O from freezing the user interface?

It has io and CPU schedulers which solved this issue around 5 years ago.

The asynchronous io API has nothing to do with this.

Re: Windows Server 2019 Includes OpenSSH

#180

Post by grumpydba »

gruez wrote: post #94
pkaye wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about asynchronous I/O calls? Or using separate threads for I/O vs UI?

>What about asynchronous I/O calls? random google result: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11866076 >Or using separate threads for I/O vs UI? not the target use for completion ports, which is handling thousands of outstanding IO requests with a few threads.

You mean an IO scheduler, eventually with a plugable architecture ?

https://lwn.net/Articles/720675/

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