Part 3. Some handly windows helpers

Digression – some additional tools for windows users

If you work from windows, you’ll be needing following tools or similar.

PUTTY - SSH client

Hybdridfox uses by default putty on windows to connect to the instance. Putty is a popular ssh and telnet client.
You can download it from:

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

There is a number of separate applications. I’d recommend downloading at least:

• Putty, the actual client
• Puttygen – you will need this later to convert between key pair formats as explained shortly
• Pagent – helper agent that holds your keys in memory already decoded so you can use them without having to type passphrase every time.
• Pscp and psftp – clients for secure copy (scp) and secure ftp (sftp). If you use winscp, you will not need these (see below).

WINSCP. FTP and SCP client

I use winscp as I find it as one of the most convenient tools for moving files to the cloud. You can download it from:

http://winscp.net/eng/index.php

When you start the winscp, you need to define:
Host name. You can get this from the hybrid fox by placing the selection on top of the instance you want to connect to, press right mouse button and select 'Copy public DNS name to clipboard'

Username - root
Private key file - select the browse button (...) and browse to the right directory and select the ppk file. See the previous post how to use the puttygen to generate the ppk file from the pem file available from eucalyptus.

You can copy files to the cloud by moving the the source directory on the panel on left and to the destination directory on the right panel. Select the files you want to move and drag and drop or press F5 or the Copy button at the bottom panel.


XMING – X server for windows

Xming is a popular x server for windows. The SOA Suote install tools are graphical (there are options for command line install as well), we need to be running a X server on the local machine so that the install programs start and show a graphical GUI on the screen of our machine.

You can get xming from:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/xming/

Just install it and start it. A small icon will appear at the bottom of your screen to indicate xming is running.

Note: You need to start xming before you connect to an instance. If you start it afterwards, x commands will not start. For quickly testing if everything works you can start e.g. xclock. Also to use xming, yoy need to setup X11 forwarding in the putty session (i.e. when you connect to the instance, do not forget to set Connection/SSH/X11 ->[x] Enable X11 forwarding)

Note 2: As an alternate to xming you can take a look at Xvnc (X VNC Server). It requires opening up port (5900) to the instance.