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Remote Access on Windows

Video Tutorial

📺 Video tutorial

If you're more of a visual learner, watch the video walkthrough of this tutorial.

Reference

Definitions table to follow along in this document

Key ValueValue
SSH Key Filecn_node_id
Remote IP address of our VPS113.113.113.113
SSH Key Pair File LocationUsers/.ssh/home/netmet
Local SystemThe system used to access our remote VPS
Remote SystemThe system (VPS) we created in the prior documentation (DO, AWS, or GCP) that we are connecting to
[...]Indicates redacted text and/or information
REMINDER

We are pretending our remote location (VPS) has an external IP address of 113.113.113.113 and our user name is netmet ⬅️ do not use this!

info

In previous tutorials we downloaded puTTY. We will be returning to this application for the rest of this document. You are free to use whatever terminal emulation program that suites you best.

Connect via Windows

Time to connect to our newly created instance!

Setup Hostname or IP

Start up Putty.exe and in the Host Name (or IP address) place the IP address of your VPS instance.

danger

113.113.113.113 is a fake IP address: Do not use.

Setup TCP port

Set the port (if not already there) to 22

We will save our work for use later, by saving this as a session.

Define session Name

Give it a name that suits your needs and describes this session properly.

Auto Login

Click on the data element from the menu (under Connection).

Enter root in the auto-login option. We will be changing this later.

IMPORTANT

Different cloud providers use different default users to access your VPS for the first time. GCP and DO use root while AWS uses ubuntu. We will use root in our examples... make sure to change this to ubuntu if you are using AWS, or review the documentation for the provider of your choice to determine their default username.

SSH session

Expand the SSH section.

Click Auth under the SSH section under Connection section.

Click on the Browse and navigate to your SSH Key File. Choose the file and make sure it populates into the Private Key box. Optionally you can type the file's full PATH into the box.

Upgrade Notice >0.76

Feature Change

Version > v0.76 updated the SSH private key location to its own separate section.

Persist session definition

Click Session section (top of menu) and click on the Save button. This will persist our session information for later.

Create remote connection

Click Open.

A new window should open, it will attempt to connect into an SSH session with the parameters we specified. The SSH Session should challenge you for a passphrase for the Key Pair file that your VPS was setup with, during the installation.

After successfully entering in that password, you should be connected and have a prompt!

Excellent you are now on your remote system through your local system!

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