How do I get Bitvise WinSSHD to provide me with a CMD console when I log in? SSHing to a Windows machine.(from a windows machine too)

Question

How do I get Bitvise WinSSHD to provide me with a CMD console when I log in?

I set up Bitvise SSH server locally, and logged in locally with cygwin and with Bitvise SSH client. A bit odd that I can't get output with ls, but that aside. Notice it's not a CMD shell. e.g. commands are ls and pwd, not dir

I have a recollection of using WinSSHD and getting to a windows console. I used to use it quite a bit at a time when I was using SSH quite a bit.

If I check a post/answer I wrote mentioning Bitvise WinSSHD here,

How to determine the username on a windows command shell

My answer to that guy's question shows that then, in 2015, I had gotten a CMD shell up with winsshd on the remote end. My answer at that link shows some output I got from the shell.

At the time it happened without me changing any setting or doing anything special.

So maybe the difference is down to a change in Bitvise SSH server between then and now. I wonder if maybe there's a setting to make it behave like it did in the past and get me a CMD shell up?

Or maybe it'd do it and by default, but something else is going wrong causing a messed up form of linux shell to appear?

Answer 1

I assume you are using a recent Bitvise SSH Server version. The current most recent version is 9.23. The last version that used the name WinSSHD was 5.26 (from 2011).

If you are seeing bvshell come up by default, you are probably using a virtual account, where this is the default Shell access type setting.

The Shell access type setting is configured in the account settings entry, either in Easy settings or in Advanced settings. Simply change it to Command Prompt and then the Windows Command Prompt will come up instead of bvshell.

The Windows Command Prompt does not respect the SSH Server's virtual filesystem, and will provide access to everything in the filesystem which is accessible to the Windows account which provides the security context for the logon session. When using virtual accounts, administrators usually do not intend this. This is why the default shell for virtual accounts is bvshell.

If you want to access the Windows Command Prompt, you can just configure a Windows account settings entry, and remove the virtual account. However, it is perfectly OK to use a virtual account as well, as long as you know what you are achieving.