PLink Tunnel

The Plink Tunnel action creates an SSH tunnel for secure FTP, Telnet, and SMTP authentication over SSH.

Notes:

•	Use the Telnet action with SSH security protocol for secure SSH connections, and the FTP action with SFTP security for secure SFTP file transfers.

•	plink.exe must be available in the PATH environment variable, which this action uses to set up the tunnel.

•	By default, this action is not displayed (existing steps will still be displayed in the Step panes and will build normally). To show all hidden actions, right-click in the Actions pane and choose Show Hidden.

The process ID of the Plink process will be stored in the RUNPROGRAM_PROCESSID temporary macro. This can be used in a Kill Process action after using the tunnel to tear down the tunnel.

You must first use putty.exe to set up the keys needed for secure access. In the Putty application, configure a connection to the host, and open it once to accept the RSA/DSA key provided by SSH on that host. You are typically prompted when connecting to accept the key; answering Yes will add the key to your registry, enabling future access without prompting. You can also create a saved session in Putty, then specify this session name in the Plink Tunnel step instead of the individual properties. This session can also specify a private key file, eliminating the need to manually define each tunnel property or the configuration step above. See the PuTTy web site for more information.

You will also be prompted for the username and password for each protocol. Alternatively, you can utilize public key authentication to avoid having to specify a username and password in the build script -- see the PuTTy user manual for more details on setting this up.