PuTTY & WinSCP Howto

PuTTY & WinSCP How-to:
Accessing your account on grad.econ.ubc.ca

The following information outlines the configuration of PuTTY (which can be downloaded here; choose the Putty.exe link) and WinSCP (which can be downloaded here; choose the "WinSCP x.y.z application" link). They are both free and widely used clients for SSH and SCP respectively. You will need to use PuTTY (SSH) to change your password.  You will want to use WinSCP to move files back and forth from a Microsoft Windows computer to your grad.econ.ubc.ca account.  (These programs don't do anything special; they are simply generic interfaces to an established (open standard) protocol, i.e. they simply allow you to talk with another computer through a particular protocol, just like any web browser does for the http protocol. So you could use any other program which speaks SSH or SCP).

When you download the above programs from a Web browser, choose to save the .exe files on the Desktop.  When the download is finished, launch the chosen application.

The first screen that you see when you launch the client is the following:
PuTTY WinSCP
putty winscp


You will now need to enter the following information. This example uses the host hbar.phys.psu.edu; instead, you should use grad.econ.ubc.ca and your own username.  Make sure to click on "SSH" in the PuTTY window. Don't enter your password at this stage in the WinSCP box.

PuTTY WinSCP
putty winscp

Once this is done, you can either connect immediately or save the configuration for future use. If you save the configuration, whenever you wish to connect to this host all you need to do is double click on the saved session entry and the connection will be launched.
PuTTY WinSCP
Enter a session name in the text box under "Saved Sessions" and click Save. Go to "Stored Sessions" sub-tab, click Save, enter a session name and click OK.
putty winscp

Now you can click on "Open" in PuTTY or "Login" in WinSCP.  If this is the first time you are making the connection, you will be prompted to accept the security credentials from grad.econ.ubc.ca. Accept the credentials.  You will be prompted for your password.

Uploading / downloading files

Run WinSCP as above.  After you have logged in, you will see a Windows explorer like screen. On the left side are the files local to your (Microsoft Windows) machine and on the right are the files in your user space on grad.econ.ubc.ca.  You can click and drag from either window to copy files. Be careful to copy them in the right direction!!  Only files in the "web" directory of your account are accessible to the world via http.  In general, you should make sure not to change any of the files whose name starts with a dot (period) in your account's file space.

winscp


Changing your password

Log onto your acccount using PuTTY. 

  1. After logging in, you will see a standard UNIX shell prompt. This might be a dollar sign ($) or a greater-than sign (>) or something else. The actual prompt depends on your account configuration.

  2. To change your password, enter the 'passwd' command and follow the instructions given. (Note that this command is the word "password" without the "or" in the middle.)
  3. After you change your password, you will be back at a UNIX shell prompt. Just type 'exit' to log out.