18.7 SSH Key-based Authentication from Windows 10 Clients

Recent releases of Windows 10 include a subset of the OpenSSH implementation that is used by most Linux and macOS systems as part of Windows PowerShell. This allows SSH key-based authentication to be set up from a Windows 10 client using similar steps to those outlined above for Linux and macOS.

To open Windows PowerShell on a Windows 10 system press the Win+X keyboard combination and select it from the menu, or locate and select it from the Start menu. Once running, the PowerShell window will appear as shown in Figure 18-1:

Figure 18-1

If you already have a private key from another client system, simply copy the id_rsa file to a folder named .ssh on the Windows 10 system. Once the file is in place, test the authentication within the PowerShell window as follows:

$ ssh -l <username>@<hostname>

For example:

PS C:\Users\neil> ssh -l neil 192.168.1.101

Enter passphrase for key 'C:\Users...