Setting up an SSH tunnel (Windows)

This page explains how to set up an SSH tunnel on Windows using Putty, for the purpose of routing traffic between SmartGit and your Git repository through the SSH tunnel.

When you start Putty, a configuration window shows up where you can configure the connection you’re about to open. On the Session page, enter the host name or IP address and the port number of the connection. For this tutorial let’s say we’ll connect to my.private.server, port number 22. On the Session page, you may save your configuration as a session.

Next up, enter the required authentication information on the pages Connection|Data and Connection|SSH|Auth. For this example, we’ll log in as user john, using the private key file F:\certificates\my-git-certificate.ppk.

Now comes the part where we set up the SSH tunnel: On the page Connection|SSH|Tunnels, enter the source and destination of the tunnel. We’ll use 2022 as source port and my.private.server:22 as destination. Leave the other options as they are, i.e. Local and Auto. Click the Add button to add the tunnel to the connection configuration.

Finally, click the Open button at the bottom of the Putty configuration window to open the connection. Now, while the connection is open, you can access your Git repository from SmartGit through the SSH tunnel. In our example, we can now clone the Git repository via a URL like this: ssh://john@localhost:2022/path/to/gitrepo