TinyTERM for iPad 1.2.0, released on August 3, 2011, will give the message “Error reading public key” on some SSH connections. This is due to a bug in the switch that controls public key authentication. That switch state doesn’t get properly saved if you hit the Done button instead of Connect.

We have a workaround which will fix the problem. Go to TinyTERM’s Configure menu and select your connection. Tap the Manage SSH Keys button. In the resulting screen, turn on the Use public key switch. Hit the Back button. Tap Manage SSH Keys again and turn off public key. Hit Back again, then hit Connect. TinyTERM will connect using password authentication.

You can also work around this problem by disabling RSA authentication on the server. To disable RSA on the host, go to its /etc/ssh directory and edit the sshd_config file. Look for the following two lines:

RSAAuthentication yes
PubkeyAuthentication yes

Change “yes” to “no” on each line. The lines may also be commented out with the # character. If so, remove it from the beginning of the line when making the change. Restart the SSH daemon after making the change.

TinyTERM for iPad version 1.2.1 has been uploaded as well. It became available on August 8. It fixes that switch, and adds in an authentication search for SSH. If the initial authentication fails, it will try the next method made available by the server, and so on, until all available methods have been tried.

On 64-bit Windows 7, TinyTERM Plus may fail to connect automatically when the connection type is set to SSH. This can be cleared up by running TinyTERM in a 32-bit compatibility mode. To do that, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Start menu and right-click on the TinyTERM Emulator icon.
2. Select Properties from the pop-up menu.
3. In the resulting dialog, go to the Compatibility tab.
4. Check the box marked Run this program in compatibility mode for:
5. Select Windows XP (Service Pack 3) from the drop-down list.
6. OK the changes.

SSH will connect normally after that.

When connecting via SSH to a new system, TinyTERM asks the user to approve the host’s fingerprint. This dialog cannot be bypassed.

When using TinyTERM’s ActiveX control CenTE.ocx programatically, this dialog does not come up. If the host’s fingerprint is not already registered with TinyTERM, the connection fails silently. The only workaround is to connect to the host using TinyTERM to register the fingerprint first.

Century Software, Inc., has had a customer request that this dialog have an option to bypass it programatically. This would remove the need for manual connections to register the fingerprint.

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Century Software, Inc., has received a request to add SSH-based X forwarding to TinyTERM Plus. This has not yet been implemented.

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This error means that TinyTERM successfully connected to the server, but the login was denied. There are several possible causes:

• The username or password may have been typed incorrectly. Retype them both and verify the spelling on each.
• The wrong SSH connection method may be set. If the server accepts only RSA connections, but TinyTERM is using the username and password, this error will result. The reverse, using RSA to connect to a server set for username/password login, will also cause the error.
• The permissions on the file $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys may be incorrect, and the file should be owned by the affected user. The permissions must be set to -rw——-, which can be done with this command:

chmod 600 authorized_keys

• Permissions to the $HOME and $HOME/.ssh should also be checked, and should not be writable by other users, which can be achieved by these commands:

chmod go-w $HOME/.ssh
chmod go-w $HOME

You can also view this information in a screencast by clicking here.

When connecting via SSH with an RSA key, you might see this message:

Connection failed (969) – Private key decryption failed

There are a couple of possible causes for this:

• You entered the wrong username or pass phrase. The RSA key is unique to the user on the host system, and requires a specific pass phrase. If either of these does not match the RSA key, the key will not decrypt properly.
• You have the wrong RSA key loaded in TinyTERM for the server. Each host requires its own RSA key, even if the username is the same for multiple systems.

To fix the error, verify the username and pass phrase you are using. Make sure there are no typos in either. If that does not help, you’ll need to double-check the RSA key you have loaded, and may need to regenerate it.

You can now view a screencast on this topic.

When using an SSH connection, the mouse wheel will not scroll back through the buffer. You must go to the View menu and turn the Vertical Scrollbar option on, then use the scrollbar instead.

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To make an SSH connection in TinyTERM Plus 4.x, do the following:

1. From TinyTERM’s Edit menu, select Session Properties.
2. Under Connection type, select SSH. (If SSH is not available, you have TinyTERM rather than TinyTERM Plus.)
3. In the Emulation drop-down list, select the terminal emulation required by your host.
4. In the Host name, IP address, or phone number box, enter the hostname or IP address of the server.
5. Click OK to close the Session Properties dialog.
6. From TinyTERM’s File menu, select Save Session.
7. Click the Connect button.
8. A login dialog will come up. Enter your username and password, then click OK.
9. If this is the first time you’ve used TinyTERM to connect to the particular host, a fingerprint dialog will come up. Click OK to continue connecting.

For video instructions, please see this screencast.

TERM for SCO UNIX  and TERM for Linux version 6.28 also have the ability to connect via SSH. To do this, you’ll need to start TERM from the command line like so:

term -lssh:user@host.or.ip

Replace “user” with the appropriate username, and “host.or.ip” with the hostname or IP address of the target system.

If you look at the top of the file, during the TCP_SEND in an SSH connection TinyTERM Plus sends over the DH_GEX with SHA1. This excludes DH_GEX SHA256, a replacement standard for the SHA1 variant.

Newer versions of SSH require this by default. Keys generated with this requirement won’t import correctly into TinyTERM. They can’t be verified.

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Generate an RSA key through any method, then copy it to the PC. Load the key in TinyTERM and supply the username & hostname as normal. TinyTERM still asks for both username and password on connect, as though RSA key was not there.

This happens because the hka= and hkafile= keys in the .tpx file aren’t set when you use an RSA key. The key is ignored because it’s not written to the .tpx. But manually editing the information into the .tpx file doesn’t always work either.

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