PuTTY Replacement

[LAwLz]

Hello everyone!

I recently found a program called MobaXterm and I really like it. The problem is that it's closed source and since I have more than 15 devices I need saved, I need the enterprise version which is quite expensive (about 87 dollars). What I really like about MobaXterm is the Cisco syntax highlighting, tabs, writing in multiple sessions at once and remote desktop integration, so if anyone knows of an alternative with that please let me know.

 

But that got me thinking, what clients do other people use and recommend? Here are some that I know of:

PuTTY

KiTTY

SuperPuTTY

mRemoteNG

Just SSH from the terminal.

[Bananasplit_00]

last time i was using SSH i was using PuTTY IIRC

[imreloadin]

I used MobaXterm all the time at work, loved that thing.

[KuJoe]

That MobaXterm looks awesome, I might consider spending the $69 if there's an easy way to import all of my 80 servers from PuTTY/MTPuTTY into it.

[Denned]

I use nRemoteNG with Putty. I'm too cheap to buy SecureCRT which probably is the best one, or atleast one of the best. But also really expensive at a ~$100

Havn't ever tried MobaXterm, but I imagine that like SecureCRT it's a bit like nRemoteNG on steroids.

Superputty isn't maintained anymore.

[Lurick]

I prefer SecureCRT myself but I've seen people use all sorts of different programs.

[markr54632]

There's teraterm, which didnt get mentioned, but it is missing most of the features you want. I'm having a weird issue with putty not liking my terminal server.

[AbsoluteFool]

I'm just using SSH from another linux server, as i have serval linux VMs on my desktop

[brwainer]

From linux I generally just use SSH from a terminal. On Windows I used to use PuTTY but moved to KiTTY as we started using ssh:// links heavily at work, and that’s easier to set up with KiTTY than PuTTY. Since then I’ve come to love some of the extra features KiTTY has, like caching your logins as long as a particular window stays open.

 

I have a few coworkers who swear by mRemoteNG. I’ve looked at it but haven’t really tried it.

 

The feature set of MobaXTerm is impressive but looking at the screenshots it doesn’t really click for me. Something about the UI just feels unprofessional.

[beersykins]

Mremoteng if not securecrt.

 

Now that you can use a bash shell in windows from the Ubuntu overlay I find myself using that more often than not.

[Blake]

13 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Hello everyone!

I recently found a program called MobaXterm and I really like it. The problem is that it's closed source and since I have more than 15 devices I need saved, I need the enterprise version which is quite expensive (about 87 dollars). What I really like about MobaXterm is the Cisco syntax highlighting, tabs, writing in multiple sessions at once and remote desktop integration, so if anyone knows of an alternative with that please let me know.

 

But that got me thinking, what clients do other people use and recommend? Here are some that I know of:

PuTTY

KiTTY

SuperPuTTY

mRemoteNG

Just SSH from the terminal.

for Putty?

PuttyCM

 

for configuring Cisco Switches?

poor mans NMS: tftp server and a powershell script that will tell a Cisco to look for it's config file on the network. Eventually I'll have time to create a powershell function that will maintain the 99% of config files that is the same network wide...

[beersykins]

5 hours ago, Blake said:

poor mans NMS

That sounds convenient, once you're all fluid with that, find a network job at a place with some $ so you can easily forget all of the skills you have obtained.  Career progression is weird lol

[lacion]

i did this exact same exercise a few months ago. i ended up paying for mobaxterm, worth every penny.

 

i could not find anything with the same feature set, that worked as well as mobaxt

[KuJoe]

5 minutes ago, lacion said:

i did this exact same exercise a few months ago. i ended up paying for mobaxterm, worth every penny.

 

i could not find anything with the same feature set, that worked as well as mobaxt

Are you able to import from PuTTY?

[lacion]

20 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

Are you able to import from PuTTY?

i do not use putty, but i remember the pro version has a lot of tools in the customizer to do that kind of things.

 

a quick google search seems to indicate you can import from putty no problem https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48943180/how-to-import-sessions-into-mobaxterm

[Umberto]

Why wouldn't you just use good old ssh? And configure your shell if you want syntax highlighting? 

[Mikensan]

3 hours ago, Umberto said:

Why wouldn't you just use good old ssh? And configure your shell if you want syntax highlighting? 

Convienent to have a defined list of servers to just click and go. < 10 servers no biggie, but on a larger scale it just gets annoying.

[Umberto]

20 minutes ago, Mikensan said:

Convienent to have a defined list of servers to just click and go. < 10 servers no biggie, but on a larger scale it just gets annoying.

I don't have 10+ servers to deal with but I put everything (ip, user, port, keys etc) in my ssh config and then just go

ssh host1

And you can use an alias to list all hosts from your config if you forget what you named them

alias sshhosts="sed -rn ‘s/^\s*Host\s+(.*)\s*/\1/ip’ ~/.ssh/config"

But I don't know if this works on windows though. 

[Mikensan]

7 minutes ago, Umberto said:

I don't have 10+ servers to deal with but I put everything (ip, user, port, keys etc) in my ssh config and then just go

ssh host1

And you can use an alias to list all hosts from your config if you forget what you named them

alias sshhosts="sed -rn ‘s/^\s*Host\s+(.*)\s*/\1/ip’ ~/.ssh/config"

But I don't know if this works on windows though. 

With windows 10 you can get bash so I imagine you could, maybe. Guess you still have to recall the aliases you chose for your hosts, not the end of the world. 

Though I assume there's a way to print a list of aliases vs cat'ing the whole config?

 

One thing for me is switches, I rarely log in and with the number we have I'd get lost. "nice to have" to fire up putty or similar, and see something like Fourth Floor sw1 or similar. Larger buildings you could further organize it in a GUI with "folders" - fourth floor switches etc... easier to drill down.

 

Guess the idea is making life "easier" even though there is still a viable method as you pointed out.

[LAwLz]

18 hours ago, Umberto said:

I don't have 10+ servers to deal with but I put everything (ip, user, port, keys etc) in my ssh config and then just go 

ssh host1

And you can use an alias to list all hosts from your config if you forget what you named them

alias sshhosts="sed -rn ‘s/^\s*Host\s+(.*)\s*/\1/ip’ ~/.ssh/config"

But I don't know if this works on windows though. 

Windows doesn't natively support it, but you can get it working with Ubuntu on Windows. But that just becomes convoluted.

 

The biggest reason is that I want graphical organization of my devices. Using aliases and cat is nice when you got a handful of devices, but when you got 200+ devices, which belong to different companies/organizations, which often use very similar names then it becomes a bit chaotic.

 

But the biggest reason is convenience. Configuring things the way I want would require me to basically rewrite MobaXTerm. I don't just want a barebones "ssh 192.168.1.1" program.

For example coloring the output is really annoying to do yourself. The output from Cisco devices isn't colorized. So I'd have to do that myself using some bash script and regex. Doable, but really annoying and time consuming to get right.

 

Things like automatic login is annoying too. You can't really just pass a username and password as a flag to a Cisco device, because it often has several layers of logins. So I'd have to write a script that processes the output text once it was logged in, and then at certain matches it would automatically type in my password. But if I do that, I need to figure out a way to hide the password within my script. So now I got another issue where I might have a clear text password saved on my computer.

 

It just becomes a major hassle.