Mremoteng: Replace PuTTY with SSH.NET

[kmscode]

Replace PuTTY with SSH.NET

[klonos]

Just curious, what are the major advantages of SSH.NET over PuTTY?

[jumoog]

no idea.. but maybe better Linux support?

[sparerd]

There are a few reasons we've been looking into replacing PuTTY as the default ssh/etc client:

• Tighter integration. We currently spawn a new PuTTY process off of mRemoteNG. It's essentially acting like any other external program you can define, just with a little more built-in support.
• Better security. Because PuTTY is called as an external program, we have to pass host/username/and password data to it in clear text over the command line.
• Better customization. Since SSH.Net is a library, we can control every minute aspect of the connection that it establishes and how it is displayed to the user.
• As @jumoog said, this also allows for better Linux support. SSH.Net is written in .Net Core which runs on Linux. Removing the PuTTY requirement is a good step toward cross platform support.

For those that still like PuTTY, we will be keeping it around as an option for handling ssh/telnet/RAW/etc. However, it will not be the default for new installations.

[jcefoli]

Even if we chose to use SSH.NET, would the app still be able to leverage the PuTTY registry path to load those saved connections, or would ssh connections be stored in some other way?

[sparerd]

Yea, we could still load and use putty session info from the registry. It probably wouldnt be the primary way of saving ssh connection records though

[klonos]

@sparerd thanx for taking the time to explain. All these seem pretty solid reasons as to why the change. It's just that with the change, I'm not sure whether certain features that I'm used to from PuTTY would still be available (silly things like the selection auto-copy and the right-click paste). That's all.

[jumoog]

auto-copy and the right-click paste is priceless

[igor2x]

Just my two cents. The following bug on JIRA was pointed to this Github bug:
https://mremoteng.atlassian.net/browse/MR-883

[sparerd]

This is all great feedback. We wont be replacing putty right away, there
will be plenty of time to make sure the native ssh client has the right
features

On Oct 22, 2016 2:59 AM, "Kilian von Pflugk" [email protected]
wrote:

auto-copy and the right-click paste is priceless

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[mcarbonneaux]

must be compatible with peagent protocol for key forwarding, and then can be used with pageant or alternative like keepass with keeagent....

but you need to implement also terminal emulation... ssh.net is only ssh protocol implementation...

you need .net library that implemente xterm/vt220/linux terminal emulation...

i've found this one, https://github.com/poderosaproject/poderosa

[kmscode]

@mcarbonneaux

Thanks for the additional info. This is largely just a place holder at this time. We don't have any solid time frame as to when this could be implemented and due to various other factors, its unlikely that PuTTYNG will be removed (it just wouldn't be the default most likely).

[pedro2555]

@kmscode Just took a bit to read on SSH.NET, and it doesn't seem to support SSHv1, which PuTTY does. Any plan on that?

[kmscode]

@pedro2555 the plan would be to keep PuTTY for things not supported by SSH.NET, but make SSH.NET the default for SSH2.

[jotatsu]

Put in 2.0 for long term usage. This would require multi clients for protocol so mRemoteNG can mix internal and external clients.