Using PuTTY on Windows

Step 1: Download PuTTY
MemShell is connected to by SSH and PuTTY is the recommend SSH client for Microsoft Windows. The putty official website is here:

​http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

There are a large number of options on the download page including 32-bit and 64-bit versions of PuTTY. This link:

​https://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/w32/putty.exe

will always provide the latest 32-bit version of PuTTY which is compatible with all versions of Windows and is the recommended choice.

To run PuTTY simply double click the downloaded binary "putty.exe" in your Downloads directory.

Step 2: connect to MemShell
When you open PuTTY, you are presented with the screen below. Enter either:

• shell.memset.com
• shell-du.memset.com

in the Host Name field. The one you need to use is shown in the MemShell Settings page for your server.

Click "Open" and when prompted to accept the host key, select "Yes":

This warning dialogue will only appear the first time that you connect to the MemShell server. Thereafter, you will be taken directly to the MemShell command line login.

Step 3: log into MemShell
This first login prompt is the login for the MemShell server. You need to use the details that are shown on the MemShell Settings page. The username will be the name of the server you are logging into and the password is the one shown when you enabled the MemShell account.

After you enter the MemShell username and password you will be connected to your server. Your server will require a valid username and password which you have configured.

The serial console method of communication is old and sometimes doesn’t quite sync correctly when the MemShell server hands over the connection. When that happens you will not see a username or password prompt but the following:

If this happens simply hit enter on your keyboard. This will force the connection to re-sync.

Sometimes there is an additional sync issue where you will be taken directly to the password prompt before a username prompt. Shown here:

If this happens just hit enter again.

Step 4: log into your server
The correct prompt that you need looks like the following for a server called "examplaaa1":

examplaaa1 login:

Shown here with the "root" username entered:

When you have entered a username and password for your server you will be logged into your server’s command line.

N.B., do not change the size of your PuTTY terminal from the size that it originally opens. This is because the serial console communication expects the display size to be 80x24 (the PuTTY default) and any changes to that will likely result in garbled text.