Alternative SSH Application to Plink

Question

I have recently started having problems with TortoiseCVS, or more specifically with plink, the SSH application that comes with it. The IP address it tries to connect to can not be changed and is stuck with the old CVS repository's IP. Downloading plink from it's home site and calling from the command line still has this problem.

TortoiseCVS has the option to choose the SSH application it uses and I was wondering which other alternatives there are that I can use instead?

Answer 1

It might be worth trying Tunnelier from www.bitvise.com

Answer 2

Putty is probably the best SSH client out there:

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

Answer 3

Are you sure this is a problem with plink? It sounds to me like you have CVS/Root files lying around that still point to the old cvs ip address. In general, CVS doesn't make changing repositories into a fun process. Since you are using Windows, if you install WinCVS with macros support (Python module loaded) it has a macro that can be used to mass change CVS roots.

Otherwise, its up to you to script the process.

FWIW, I've used plink quite a bit and never had a similar problem.

Answer 4

For what it's worth, plink is just a command-line version of putty written by the same guy.

I think jsight probably has the right idea.

Answer 5

+1 for PuTTy... been using it for the last decade and never needed anything else!

Answer 6

I'd recommend you stick with PuTTY too. You might find it useful to run Pageant in conjunction with Plink to avoid having to type in the passphrase.

But if you want to research alternatives you should review this Wikipedia resource:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_SSH_clients

Answer 7

TortoiseSVN, at least, has an option called Relocate which you can use if the location of the repository has changed.

Also, this is a good example why you should always, always use DNS/hostnames instead of the IP address directly.

Answer 8

Thanks to jsight (and Mark Biek for pointing out the connection between plink and putty) I decided to investigate more fully.

It turned out that plink had been using the "Default Settings" stored Session that I set up for putty and wasn't allowing them to be overridden.

edit:

The Geek: Also, this is a good example why you should always, always use DNS/hostnames instead of the IP address directly.

The problem was nothing to do with the IP address change, and in this case the DNS changed as well. I can see your point, but this isn't the 'good example' you are looking for.

Answer 9

I'm using TortoiseCVS 1.10.9 on Vista Business, and ext connections to my server were regularly crashing TortoisePlink.

I downloaded the latest puTTY (0.60) and set TortoiseCVS to point to the plink included with this puTTY (CVS->Preferences->Tools). The command line options appear to be the same, but one difference is that TortoisePlink pops up a password dialog if you don't have a keypair for your server. Regular plink does not. So you have to either create the keypair (puttygen, I believe) or specify a -pw on the command line options (very BAD security idea).