Using WinSCP every day, for everyone

So now that umeishazoea kidogo kutumia WinSCP kila siku, there are some good tips for using WinSCP faster that are not obvious. Saved sessions make connecting only use a easy double click for either of your servers. The “Shell Icon” button can make it very easy to transfer documents to one place, like resources if you set the target Directory. I will explain these two things more below.

There are also some limits and warnings for using WinSCP.

• Sometimes the Root user is disabled for the SCP protocol for security reasons. You will not know if it is ready on your system until you test it.
• You will only be able to access or change the same files and folders that the username you logged in with is allowed to.
• Even students can use their accounts to log in to WinSCP but they will be fairly restricted to their normal place.
• There are a lot of grey Solaris hidden folders that show up in your Solaris Home directory when you look at it with WinSCP. You usually should not delete them as they hold settings for many of your user’s Solaris programs but you can hide them (or show them again) by pressing Ctrl-Alt-H all together.

Quick Sessions

First, type your login information as you did last time–put either 192.168.2.240 or 192.168.2.242 in Host name (The IP addresses for Server 1 and Server 2, respectably). If you want to include your particular user as part of this shortcut, type that too. This time, instead of Login, press “Save…” button. Choose a name for your session, it will suggest something like thadk@192.168.2.240 and, if you typed it, use the tick to decide if you want to save the password for other people to access your account with this shortcut (see picture above). You will see that after you have saved one session, you will always start WinSCP on the “Stored sessions” item on the left side instead of “Session”! Now you can double click the session you saved to open it instantly or click on the Session item on the left to create a new one. If you typed a username before you saved, that is part of the session and you will not be able to type it again.

Making an icon that sends files to a Resources folder

Now do you see the Shell Icon button on the left in the picture above? We will use it soon. First, choose a session for the server with the resources folder on it by clicking it once, then press Edit. That will take you back to Session but you should go over to Directories. In Directories set the Remote Directory to your resources folder. At Mpwapwa TTC this is “/resources” without quotes. Now go back to Session and save your session again, maybe as “Resources”. Finally make sure your new session is highlighted, press Shell icon and choose either “Desktop icon” or “Send To…”.

Desktop icon will let you double click or drag files onto the icon to copy them into your resources folder. “Send To…” will let you right click any file and look down at “Send To->Resources” from anywhere in Windows. If you’ve saved your password and/or username you won’t have to enter them.

Remember that your permissions will be just as the user logged into Solaris themselves. If they are usually not allowed to write to the resources then they won’t be able to do it in WinSCP. Also be careful saving passwords. It is convenient but poor students or staff could steal your information using your session!

Thanks for reading, the next Solaris tip will be where to find videos and good resources to learn more about Solaris from Sun. The next Windows topic will be how to make hidden files show on your flash drives, followed by notes on keyboard short cuts to make using Windows (even Ubuntu or Solaris) more effective.