cis571-ssh-setup

One liner for windows users to set up ssh key on biglab or eniac or any other server that you have access to. This is built on the traditional cmdlet of windows dating back at least to Win2000, you do not need fancy stuff such as WSL or PowerShell to run this script!

Why this is useful

VSCode is quite "dirty" in terms of 2-step verification during an SSH session. Setting up an SSH key pair and signing in through ssh keys, allows you to connect to eniac or biglab without entering the password and do 2-step verification every time (terminal or VSCode). That's just a huge plus!

Fun fact, your home directory of eniac is mounted on biglab as well, as a network drive. So you can access your files on eniac from biglab and vice versa. This also means that you only need to do it once for biglab and eniac!

How to do it

• Clone this repo to your computer.

• Then Right Click on the .cmd file:

  • for windows 10, click on Open with, and then choose any text editor (e.g. Notepad)
  • for windows 11, click Show more options and then choose Edit, this should open up a Notepad for you

• Change the first line to your pennkey. (Please don't use the default zhiyaot, Thanks! I don't want random keys in my authorized_keys file.)

• Save, and click on this file from File Explorer.

• This will open a terminal, prompting for Password: (Enter your pennkey password here)

• Then you do 2-step verification (similar to what you do when ssh into the server)

• You are all set for ssh

My advise... (Optional)

• Go install WSL2 and use ssh-keygen and ssh-copy-id instead. (That is the right way to do it!)

@REM *************** CIS 571 SSH Setup ****************
@REM This script will setup your ssh keys so you can
@REM ssh to eniac.seas.upenn.edu without a password
@REM 
@REM Please file all bugs by submitting a issue on
@REM the github page.
@REM 
@REM Zhiyao Tang 
@REM **************************************************

set pennkey=zhiyaot
@REM        ^^^^^^^ change your pennkey here

if not exist %USERPROFILE%\.ssh\id_rsa (
    ssh-keygen -t rsa -q -f %USERPROFILE%\.ssh\id_rsa -N ""
    echo enter your pennkey password here
    type %USERPROFILE%\.ssh\id_rsa.pub | ssh %pennkey%@eniac.seas.upenn.edu "cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"
    echo we have generated a key for you in %USERPROFILE%\.ssh\id_rsa
    echo you can now ssh to eniac.seas.upenn.edu without a password
    echo you do not need to run this again
    pause
) else (
    echo you already have a key in %USERPROFILE%\.ssh\id_rsa
    echo enter your pennkey password here
    type %USERPROFILE%\.ssh\id_rsa.pub | ssh %pennkey%@eniac.seas.upenn.edu "cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"
    echo you already got setup, dont run this again
    pause
)