### Description **Originally reported by migration: https://bugs.libssh.org/T27** Pageant is PuTTY's SSH authentication agent. Multiple other FOSS projects like WinSCP use it too. There exists a patch for libssh-0.5.3 (through 0.5.5) to support Pageant. However, it does not apply cleanly to 0.6.3. http://code.ohloh.net/file?fid=E4Rb2mwou8NxjZQ//2pgNx7794uM&cid=9zDTNiYDvV0&s=&fp=305438&projSelected=true#L0 Currently on the X2Go Project, X2Go Client for Windows is stuck using libssh-0.5.5 because many of our users rely on Pageant support. We have bug 590 written for us to migrate to libssh 0.6.x with the Pageant patch applied. http://bugs.x2go.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=590 [implement-support-for-putty-s-pageant-0.6.4-71a931b.patch](/uploads/bfac18bc5642dafa2bdecfd083b57953/implement-support-for-putty-s-pageant-0.6.4-71a931b.patch) ### Comments: **migration commented on 2017-06-19 06:45:06 UTC:** On Sunday, January 11th 2015 14:27:05, Michael DePaulo wrote: > Back in September, my friend Michael Frederick and I (gmail: psududemike) managed to port that patch to 0.6.3. We've been using it successfully in X2Go Client for Windows 4.0.3.0 and later. > That patch still applies to 0.6.4. I've attached the patch. > > Comments are welcome. > > I just signed my DCO. Mike Frederick assigned copyright of this patch to me, but if need be, he can sign the DCO also. > > However, I am not sure about the DCO from the authors for the original patch. Actually, there were 2 different versions of the original patch: > 0001-implement-support-for-putty-s-pageant.patch - which was superseded by: > 0001-implement-support-for-putty-s-pageant-0.5.3.patch > And to make things more confusing, there were multiple versions of the 0.5.3 patch. > That ohloh.net link no longer works. But both original patches are available here. > https://projects.kde.org/projects/kdesupport/emerge/repository/revisions/master/show/portage/win32libs/libssh > > The 2 authors of those patches appear to be: > Patrick Spendrin <ps//ml`gmx.de> > Patrick von Reth > > So at this point, I am not sure how to proceed. Let me ask: Did those 2 authors ever submit the DCO? and: ---- **migration commented on 2017-06-19 06:45:06 UTC:** On Thursday, January 15th 2015 09:03:58, Andreas Schneider wrote: > Thanks for your work. Copyright doesn't need to be assigned if all people are individuals. The Certificate of Origin is only for people who send patches with Corporate Copyright! > > The patch is far from being in a state that I would include it. We need to design a new API for this, similar to pki.c. With ssh-agens it is possible that you want to support ssh-agend and pagent on Windows at the same time. So we need a way to build with both and register the backend at the agent engine. We can discuss this on IRC. ---- **migration commented on 2017-06-19 06:45:06 UTC:** On Friday, January 16th 2015 21:41:54, Michael DePaulo wrote: > Andreas Schneider wrote: > >With ssh-agens it is possible that you want to support ssh-agend and pagent on Windows at the same time. > > I did some research : > > 1. It appears that there is no actively maintained port of OpenSSH (and therefore ssh-agent) to Windows. In order to not be affected by a vulnerability, one needs to use OpenSSH 6.7p1 or later. > > 2. In the past, NoMachine ported SSH to Windows. But they are not maintaining it anymore. The last ported version was 5.9p1. > https://www.nomachine.com/AR11K00739 > https://www.nomachine.com/NoMachine-OSS-ports > > 3. There is actively maintained software such as "OpenSSH for Windows", which is at 6.7p1. But they are actually OpenSSH for Cygwin with an easy Windows installer. > http://www.mls-software.com/opensshd.html > > If you'd like, I can test cygwin ssh-agent 6.7p1 with native Windows libssh and see if it actually works. But I do not feel it is appropriate to maintain support for native Windows ssh-agent so long as it is unmaintained. ---- **migration commented on 2017-06-19 06:49:19 UTC:** On Sunday, January 11th 2015 14:27:05, Michael DePaulo wrote: > Back in September, my friend Michael Frederick and I (gmail: psududemike) managed to port that patch to 0.6.3. We've been using it successfully in X2Go Client for Windows 4.0.3.0 and later. > That patch still applies to 0.6.4. I've attached the patch. > > Comments are welcome. > > I just signed my DCO. Mike Frederick assigned copyright of this patch to me, but if need be, he can sign the DCO also. > > However, I am not sure about the DCO from the authors for the original patch. Actually, there were 2 different versions of the original patch: > 0001-implement-support-for-putty-s-pageant.patch - which was superseded by: > 0001-implement-support-for-putty-s-pageant-0.5.3.patch > And to make things more confusing, there were multiple versions of the 0.5.3 patch. > That ohloh.net link no longer works. But both original patches are available here. > https://projects.kde.org/projects/kdesupport/emerge/repository/revisions/master/show/portage/win32libs/libssh > > The 2 authors of those patches appear to be: > Patrick Spendrin <ps//ml`gmx.de> > Patrick von Reth > > So at this point, I am not sure how to proceed. Let me ask: Did those 2 authors ever submit the DCO? and: ---- **migration commented on 2017-06-19 06:49:19 UTC:** On Thursday, January 15th 2015 09:03:58, Andreas Schneider wrote: > Thanks for your work. Copyright doesn't need to be assigned if all people are individuals. The Certificate of Origin is only for people who send patches with Corporate Copyright! > > The patch is far from being in a state that I would include it. We need to design a new API for this, similar to pki.c. With ssh-agens it is possible that you want to support ssh-agend and pagent on Windows at the same time. So we need a way to build with both and register the backend at the agent engine. We can discuss this on IRC. ---- **migration commented on 2017-06-19 06:49:19 UTC:** On Friday, January 16th 2015 21:41:54, Michael DePaulo wrote: > Andreas Schneider wrote: > >With ssh-agens it is possible that you want to support ssh-agend and pagent on Windows at the same time. > > I did some research : > > 1. It appears that there is no actively maintained port of OpenSSH (and therefore ssh-agent) to Windows. In order to not be affected by a vulnerability, one needs to use OpenSSH 6.7p1 or later. > > 2. In the past, NoMachine ported SSH to Windows. But they are not maintaining it anymore. The last ported version was 5.9p1. > https://www.nomachine.com/AR11K00739 > https://www.nomachine.com/NoMachine-OSS-ports > > 3. There is actively maintained software such as "OpenSSH for Windows", which is at 6.7p1. But they are actually OpenSSH for Cygwin with an easy Windows installer. > http://www.mls-software.com/opensshd.html > > If you'd like, I can test cygwin ssh-agent 6.7p1 with native Windows libssh and see if it actually works. But I do not feel it is appropriate to maintain support for native Windows ssh-agent so long as it is unmaintained. ---- **migration commented on 2017-06-19 06:50:59 UTC:** On Sunday, January 11th 2015 14:27:05, Michael DePaulo wrote: > Back in September, my friend Michael Frederick and I (gmail: psududemike) managed to port that patch to 0.6.3. We've been using it successfully in X2Go Client for Windows 4.0.3.0 and later. > That patch still applies to 0.6.4. I've attached the patch. > > Comments are welcome. > > I just signed my DCO. Mike Frederick assigned copyright of this patch to me, but if need be, he can sign the DCO also. > > However, I am not sure about the DCO from the authors for the original patch. Actually, there were 2 different versions of the original patch: > 0001-implement-support-for-putty-s-pageant.patch - which was superseded by: > 0001-implement-support-for-putty-s-pageant-0.5.3.patch > And to make things more confusing, there were multiple versions of the 0.5.3 patch. > That ohloh.net link no longer works. But both original patches are available here. > https://projects.kde.org/projects/kdesupport/emerge/repository/revisions/master/show/portage/win32libs/libssh > > The 2 authors of those patches appear to be: > Patrick Spendrin <ps//ml`gmx.de> > Patrick von Reth > > So at this point, I am not sure how to proceed. Let me ask: Did those 2 authors ever submit the DCO? and: ---- **migration commented on 2017-06-19 06:50:59 UTC:** On Thursday, January 15th 2015 09:03:58, Andreas Schneider wrote: > Thanks for your work. Copyright doesn't need to be assigned if all people are individuals. The Certificate of Origin is only for people who send patches with Corporate Copyright! > > The patch is far from being in a state that I would include it. We need to design a new API for this, similar to pki.c. With ssh-agens it is possible that you want to support ssh-agend and pagent on Windows at the same time. So we need a way to build with both and register the backend at the agent engine. We can discuss this on IRC. ---- **migration commented on 2017-06-19 06:50:59 UTC:** On Friday, January 16th 2015 21:41:54, Michael DePaulo wrote: > Andreas Schneider wrote: > >With ssh-agens it is possible that you want to support ssh-agend and pagent on Windows at the same time. > > I did some research : > > 1. It appears that there is no actively maintained port of OpenSSH (and therefore ssh-agent) to Windows. In order to not be affected by a vulnerability, one needs to use OpenSSH 6.7p1 or later. > > 2. In the past, NoMachine ported SSH to Windows. But they are not maintaining it anymore. The last ported version was 5.9p1. > https://www.nomachine.com/AR11K00739 > https://www.nomachine.com/NoMachine-OSS-ports > > 3. There is actively maintained software such as "OpenSSH for Windows", which is at 6.7p1. But they are actually OpenSSH for Cygwin with an easy Windows installer. > http://www.mls-software.com/opensshd.html > > If you'd like, I can test cygwin ssh-agent 6.7p1 with native Windows libssh and see if it actually works. But I do not feel it is appropriate to maintain support for native Windows ssh-agent so long as it is unmaintained. ---- **migration commented on 2017-06-19 06:52:33 UTC:** On Sunday, January 11th 2015 14:27:05, Michael DePaulo wrote: > Back in September, my friend Michael Frederick and I (gmail: psududemike) managed to port that patch to 0.6.3. We've been using it successfully in X2Go Client for Windows 4.0.3.0 and later. > That patch still applies to 0.6.4. I've attached the patch. > > Comments are welcome. > > I just signed my DCO. Mike Frederick assigned copyright of this patch to me, but if need be, he can sign the DCO also. > > However, I am not sure about the DCO from the authors for the original patch. Actually, there were 2 different versions of the original patch: > 0001-implement-support-for-putty-s-pageant.patch - which was superseded by: > 0001-implement-support-for-putty-s-pageant-0.5.3.patch > And to make things more confusing, there were multiple versions of the 0.5.3 patch. > That ohloh.net link no longer works. But both original patches are available here. > https://projects.kde.org/projects/kdesupport/emerge/repository/revisions/master/show/portage/win32libs/libssh > > The 2 authors of those patches appear to be: > Patrick Spendrin <ps//ml`gmx.de> > Patrick von Reth > > So at this point, I am not sure how to proceed. Let me ask: Did those 2 authors ever submit the DCO? and: ---- **migration commented on 2017-06-19 06:52:33 UTC:** On Thursday, January 15th 2015 09:03:58, Andreas Schneider wrote: > Thanks for your work. Copyright doesn't need to be assigned if all people are individuals. The Certificate of Origin is only for people who send patches with Corporate Copyright! > > The patch is far from being in a state that I would include it. We need to design a new API for this, similar to pki.c. With ssh-agens it is possible that you want to support ssh-agend and pagent on Windows at the same time. So we need a way to build with both and register the backend at the agent engine. We can discuss this on IRC. ---- **migration commented on 2017-06-19 06:52:33 UTC:** On Friday, January 16th 2015 21:41:54, Michael DePaulo wrote: > Andreas Schneider wrote: > >With ssh-agens it is possible that you want to support ssh-agend and pagent on Windows at the same time. > > I did some research : > > 1. It appears that there is no actively maintained port of OpenSSH (and therefore ssh-agent) to Windows. In order to not be affected by a vulnerability, one needs to use OpenSSH 6.7p1 or later. > > 2. In the past, NoMachine ported SSH to Windows. But they are not maintaining it anymore. The last ported version was 5.9p1. > https://www.nomachine.com/AR11K00739 > https://www.nomachine.com/NoMachine-OSS-ports > > 3. There is actively maintained software such as "OpenSSH for Windows", which is at 6.7p1. But they are actually OpenSSH for Cygwin with an easy Windows installer. > http://www.mls-software.com/opensshd.html > > If you'd like, I can test cygwin ssh-agent 6.7p1 with native Windows libssh and see if it actually works. But I do not feel it is appropriate to maintain support for native Windows ssh-agent so long as it is unmaintained. ---- **asn commented on 2018-09-04 19:12:21 UTC:** This probably needs some refactoring and nicer abstraction for ssh agents. ---- **chcg commented on 2019-06-19 19:03:50 UTC (Edited):** See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12452933/putty-pageant-protocol and the current version from putty base for the patch: https://github.com/github/putty/blob/master/windows/winpgntc.c ---- **DDoSolitary commented on 2020-03-21 08:07:13 UTC:** For those who're interested, I wrote a new patch from scratch which is based on the latest 0.9.3 release. [0001-Add-support-for-pageant.patch](/uploads/82981cb7385d85da6d58c372e9bba0fc/0001-Add-support-for-pageant.patch) I agree that it is better to support multiple agent implementations at the same time. Actually the situation is rather complicated on Windows currently. - Putty's pageant uses a message-only window and memory-mapped files. gpg4win also provides support for that. - Cygwin has its own implementation for AF_UNIX sockets - Microsoft now ships [[ https://github.com/PowerShell/openssh-portable | their own port of OpenSSH ]] with Windows which uses [[ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/af_unix-comes-to-windows/ | the native AF_UNIX socket introduced in Windows 10 ]]. However, older versions of this port uses a global named pipe. It would be really amazing to have all of these supported, though quite a lot of work might be needed. ----