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Windows Server 2019 Includes OpenSSH

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Windows Server 2019 Includes OpenSSH

#211

Post by no-s »

setquk wrote: post #195
voltagex_ wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is changing: * Desired State Configuration: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/dsc/overview * Powershell Remoting (please, please let SSH replace this) * Microsoft's new command line push - cmd and the underlying console have had big updates recently * https://github.com/microsoft/console * https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2018/07/20/wind...

Yes and no. Having used DSC and powershell remoting extensively, these create as many problems as they solve. Nothing works smoothly. Not a thing. The saving grace here will be SSH because then at least we can drive all our kit across both platforms from Ansible and be done with the entire MSFT management stack. At the moment we use Ansible but it runs over WinRM which is completely unreliable due to some architectur…

>I've got to the point I never want to run Windows infrastructure again. Before anyone says "it's getting better". That has been the case from 10 years and it only got different.

i know what you mean. It's part of the reason I'm on the cusp of discarding my 20ish years of MS SQL Server experience and going full Postie for the rest of my life. Windows IT infrastructure in most enterprises is a pile of lies. It's particularly galling in academia and non-profit because they can't afford to keep up with all the Microsoftia and yet still the management dreams of using Microsoft StudlyWare which would require 10x the IT cost they could ever dream of, let alone get.

Re: Windows Server 2019 Includes OpenSSH

#212

Post by amaccuish »

setquk wrote: post #195
voltagex_ wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is changing: * Desired State Configuration: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/dsc/overview * Powershell Remoting (please, please let SSH replace this) * Microsoft's new command line push - cmd and the underlying console have had big updates recently * https://github.com/microsoft/console * https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2018/07/20/wind...

Yes and no. Having used DSC and powershell remoting extensively, these create as many problems as they solve. Nothing works smoothly. Not a thing. The saving grace here will be SSH because then at least we can drive all our kit across both platforms from Ansible and be done with the entire MSFT management stack. At the moment we use Ansible but it runs over WinRM which is completely unreliable due to some architectur…

For managing desktops and not servers, Group Policy is still unbeaten. I have yet to see a unified strategy on Linux of being able to say, mount these drives on logon, show these applications, don't allow them to do x, change the background to y etc.

Sure, managing linux servers is a doddle, but desktop environments are miles harder to get right.

Re: Windows Server 2019 Includes OpenSSH

#213

Post by boomlinde »

aerique wrote: post #207
guardian5x wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess, with "normal" line endings, you mean instead of .

He means the defacto standard, yes.

Not the defacto standard, but plain POSIX. Carriage return + line feed to enter a new line starting at the left margin makes perfect sense mechanically, though, and a lot of systems with ASCII/ASCII-like encodings use some variation of this sequence (e.g. or ) for "newlines". Of course, in the interest of compatibility I'd prefer if it was one way or another, but I don't think it's fair to say that POSIX is the defacto standard. Lines in network protocols, for example, typically use as well.

Re: Windows Server 2019 Includes OpenSSH

#214

Post by Fnoord »

flukus wrote: post #33
hk__2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it’s a joke, but OpenSSH is not that old: its initial release was in December, 1999.

Looks like it was forked from some predecessors ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Shell#OSSH ) but doesn't go into the history much more than that. I remember telnet, where there any encrypted predecessors before the ssh family?

Telnet over SSL.

Re: Windows Server 2019 Includes OpenSSH

#215

Post by amaccuish »

yrro wrote: post #170
cpach wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IME most Windows servers are not directly exposed to the Internet, instead one would reach them via VPN.

It's a shame you can't use the Common Internet File System over the Internet. ️

FYI, CIFS refers specifically to the version of SMB1 that was submitted as an RFC. You should absolutely not be using "CIFS" these days.

Re: Windows Server 2019 Includes OpenSSH

#216

Post by Fnoord »

oblio wrote: post #169
riffic wrote: post #147

This reminds me of that old quotation: "Those who don't understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly."

Well, if you're going to trot out quotes from the 80s (more precisely, 1987, Henry Spencer), you should be aware that Microsoft made and sold one of the first commercial Unixes: Xenix. And they made it in 1980, long before your quote. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix -> "In the mid-to-late 1980s, Xenix was the most common Unix variant, measured according to the number of machines on which it was installed.[1][2] M…

Apple successfully leveraged UNIX to develop macOS (officially UNIX) from which they developed iOS. Google successfully managed to leverage the Linux kernel (Unix-like) and Java to develop Android. Windows Phone, on the other hand, flopped.

Re: Windows Server 2019 Includes OpenSSH

#217

Post by amaccuish »

pjc50 wrote: post #205
slededit wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If I had to define one underlying architectural difference between UNIX and Windows, it's that Windows uses RPC (and some other kinds of structured communication) where UNIX uses pipes. This has advantages if you're Microsoft and developing both ends, but in most other cases it's a huge disadvantage to discoverability and transparency. This is partly why nobody developed proper open source Exchange clients: the Excha…

OpenChange tried to build an exchange server, and it worked to a certain extent, but it's now dead I believe. Keeping up with the recent protocol changes in Exchange was too much, though ironically with the REST and MAPI over HTTP (not RPC over HTTP), it should be a lot easier to create an exchange replacement.

Samba still does amazing stuff on the directory RPC front.

Re: Windows Server 2019 Includes OpenSSH

#218

Post by boomlinde »

sys_64738 wrote: post #68

Microsoft is becoming the defacto leader in open source.

It's a funny notion that by dropping some BSD-licensed code into their OS that every other major operating system has been using for 20 years, Microsoft is somehow becoming the leader in open source.

Maybe that's just my interpretation, but without explaining what being a "leader in open source" means and by what merits Microsoft (a business dealing mainly in proprietary software) is becoming it, that's all I have to go by.

Re: Windows Server 2019 Includes OpenSSH

#219

Post by amaccuish »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #106
scarface74 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been developing on and for Windows for 20 years and just started doing anything with Linux earlier this year. If you told me I had to do anything advanced with Windows using only a CLI, I wouldn’t know where to start. On the other hand, I could maneuver my way around a bash shell. I haven’t thought about that before now.....

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…

> I think it's time for MS to develop a new ANSI/VT-compliant...

They are doing exactly that: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2018/08/02/wind...

Re: Windows Server 2019 Includes OpenSSH

#220

Post by amaccuish »

Silfen wrote: post #70
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…

Shameless plug: There's also remote GUI support through Windows Admin Center. You can manage your headless server through the browser on your workstation. It's also a good way to learn CLI-based management (the implementation is almost all powershell scripts, and there is a "show script" feature) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/manage/windo...

Still doesn't do AD and DNS etc. So I'm still RDPing from my Mac to get access to RSAT.
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