How to SSH into your Pantacor-enabled Raspberry Pi from Windows

In order to accomplish some of the more advanced tutorials and development while using Pantacor, many users need to access the Pi via SSH. While many of our users will be SSH’ing from a Linux computer, some will need to use Windows. Accessing your Pantacor device is a little different on Windows, so we’ve put together this simple guide.

If you need to SSH into your Raspberry Pi from Windows this guide will help you.

First you’ll need an SSH client. This guide recommends and will use PuTTY as an example. If you are using a different SSH client, you’ll need to adapt the steps in this guide accordingly.

You can download PuTTY here: https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

Once Putty is installed you’ll need to use PuTTYgenfirst to generate your keys. Please open PuTTYgen _{(fig. 1)}

Change the Number of bits in a generated key to 4096, the rest of the default values should be fine.

Click Generate and move your mouse around a bit as instructed._{(fig. 2)}

Click Save Private Key and save the key to your PC
Copy the long string of text in the window._{(fig. 3)}

Go to Pantacor.com and login to your device management platform.
Find your device and select the Metadata Tab.
Add a new entry to the metadata titled: pvr-sdk.authorized_keys
Add your Public Key that you copied as the value and click the + button _{(fig. 4)}

Open up Putty, expand the SSH category and click on Auth. Then click the Browse button and select the Private key file you saved earlier. _{(fig. 5)}

Click the Session category and enter the IP address of your Raspberry Pi on your local network (if you don’t know it you can look at existing connections on your router. Make sure to change the Port to 8222
Name the connection and click Save to save the settings for the future (it’s recommended to name the settings after your randomly generated device name in Pantacor)
Finally, click Open to open the SSH connection. _{(fig. 6)}

You’ll login with the name of the container as it appears in the Pantacor management interface on the Apps tab. _{(fig. 7 & 8)}

That’s it! You should now be logged into your App Container via SSH. If you have any problems reach out and we’d be happy to help.