If you have Windows 10 Anniversary Edition, you’re probably aware that you can run a complete Linux instance inside of Windows 10.

But wouldn’t it be cool if you could open a SSH session to the BASH shell from PuTTy running on your Windows 10 host?

1. Install PuTTy

The first thing we need to do is to get PuTTy on our Windows 10 host. If you already have it you’re good – if not grab it from the official PuTTy site:

2. Enable BASH on Windows 10

Mash the Windows Key, type “developer” and then click Developer Mode under Use developer features in the right pane of the Settings window.

You’ll be asked to reboot. When you come back, hit the Windows Key again and type “Turn Windows features on or off” then scroll down to “Windows Subsystem for Linux (Beta)”, click OK wait for the installation to finish (takes about 5 minutes) and then you’ll reboot again.

True to the game full movie. Okay, now we’re ready to go

Press the Windows Key + r and type “bash” to load the BASH shell. We need to set it up.

The command prompt will ask you to download Ubuntu from the Windows Store. Hit “y” to continue, let it download (took me about 15 minutes to download) and then you’ll create your UNIX username (which is distinct from your Windows username) and your password for that Linux account.

Now we need to install openssh.

I typed clear to clear the screen and then:

sudo apt-get install openssh-server

Now let’s configure the sshd_config file so we can make this baby work.

Type:

Type the forward slash key and then enter:

Now press “i” to enter the edit mode and change it to:

Press escape to leave edit mode

then press the forward slash again and enter:

We need to change this to yes

Do the same thing to change UsePriviledgeSeperation to no

Now press Escape and hit capital g:

to jump to the bottom of the file and then press

to enter insert mode again. We need to add a line:

Swap out vhudson with the username you created when you installed Bash.

Press Escape to enter command mode.

Hit ZZ to save the file and close and then bounce the SSH service.

connect to 127.0.0.1 using PuTTY and you should be in!

Now just login with your UNIX creds