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I was wondering if there's a way to use Mosh on windows without Cygwin?
I need to be able to put it on my USB drive and copy it over to a windows computer and be able to Mosh into one of my servers. Otherwise, is there a way to use Cygwin and have it portable? I did get mosh working under windows via Cygwin, but that meant I had to add an environment path to the windows computer, which, on the windows computer that I'm working on doesn't allow you to change that, since I don't have admin privileges.
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Unfortunately, there is not a native program to run mosh on Windows. You can install the Google Chrome extension (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mosh/ooiklbnjmhbcgemelgfhaeaocllobloj), or use Cygwin (https://www.cygwin.com/) to install a Windows version of mosh.
After you run mosh user@server , if successful you will be dropped into your login shell on the remote machine. If you want to check that mosh is being used instead of ssh, try typing Ctrl-^ Ctrl-Z to suspend the session (with mosh 1.2. 4 or later on the client).
How Secure Is Mosh? Mosh makes the initial connection over SSH, so the authentication is about as secure as SSH is. It uses AES-128 encryption for traffic sent over UDP, so your traffic can't be sniffed. The main issue with Mosh is that it requires a lot of ports to be open.
In computing, Mosh (mobile shell) is a tool used to connect from a client computer to a server over the Internet, to run a remote terminal. Mosh is similar to SSH, with additional features meant to improve usability for mobile users.
The Chrome version of Mosh is the easiest way to use mosh on Windows. Mosh on Cygwin uses OpenSSH and is suitable for Windows users with advanced SSH configurations. Mosh is not compatible with Cygwin's built-in Windows Console terminal emulation.
Mosh is a remote terminal application that supports intermittent connectivity, allows roaming, and provides speculative local echo and line editing of user keystrokes. It aims to support the typical interactive uses of SSH, plus:
Mosh (mobile shell) is a shell client optimized for poor or intermittent internet connections. So if you are often working on a poor mobile connection or a high-latency satellite connection, mosh is for you.
Mosh on Cygwin uses OpenSSH and is suitable for Windows users with advanced SSH configurations. Mosh is not compatible with Cygwin's built-in Windows Console terminal emulation.
MobaXTerm is portable and supports Mosh. It works quite well. I spent all day using it on a very dodgy connection and it worked like a charm.
Just get the most recent version and from the Session menu select Mosh. It did does not support IPv6 (at least in Version 9.2 (2016-09-18)):
Bugfix: Mosh sessions are forced to IPv4 only (IPv6 is not yet supported by Mosh client/server)
But it might work now, since Version 10.4 (untested):
We also improved MobaXterm behavior and fixed issues with multi-monitors, IPv6 connections, mouse scrolling and keyboard shortcuts.
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Interestingly enough, I wanted MOSH for Windows too, and I find Cygwin to be very messy. Instead, I just downloaded a minimal Text-only Debian distribution, booted it up in VirtualBox, and installed MOSH. Surprisingly, it's much less time consuming and requires less tweaking than going the Cygwin route, and makes less modifications to the host machine.
In fact, there is a portable VirtualBox, so you can put your MOSH VM and Portable VirtualBox on a memory stick.
I haven't even tried to optimize things, but it runs just fine on the 256MB of ram I gave it. It would probably run just fine on 64MB or less.
I do hope MOSH will be built into PuTTY/KiTTY in the future.
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