SSH to WSL from terminal emulator

So, you have setup WSL ( Windows Subsystem for Linux) and are not happy with the “built in”emulator. In my case, I wanted to use an emulator and ssh to the Ubuntu in wsl2.

I hit a few road blocks, but here’s how one could get around them.

Install ssh

sudo apt install openssl openssh-server```

Windows will ask you whether you want to allow ssh through the firewall. Say yes.

#### Fix the configuration

Open the configuration file at `/etc/ssh/sshd_config` and do the following.

1. Change the port from `22` to `2222`. (or another one of your choice)
1. (optional) Make `key` authentication to `no` and password auth to `yes`

PubkeyAuthentication no
PasswordAuthentication yes```

Only if you haven’t setup the keys

Start the server

sudo service ssh --full-restart```

You might see that the (ssh) keys are missing, like below

Could not load host key: /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key
Could not load host key: /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ecdsa_key
Could not load host key: /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key```

If so, create the keys like below

Create the keys

ssh-keygen -A```

And restart the server once more (see above)

#### Good to go

Go to the terminal of your choice, and `ssh` to localhost.

ssh -p 2222 user@localhost```

It’ll ask for the password, and might be a bit slow to let you in.

Be patient, you will be rewarded.

Cheers, Sandeep.