Troubleshooting PuTTY

If you have problems with your filenames or content not showing up correctly, you should add the following to your .bash_profile file to enable UTF support. View the following articles for instructions on how to update the file (depending on if you're using an FTP client or SSH):

• Creating and editing a file via FTP
• Creating and editing a file via SSH

export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
export LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8
export G_FILENAME_ENCODING=UTF-8

UTF-8 is most likely enabled already. You can check in your terminal by entering the command ‘locale’:

[server]$ locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE= 
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8" 
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE=C
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8" 
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8" 
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8" 
LC_ALL= 

You can see the first line is LANG=en_US.UTF-8. If for some reason this still doesn’t work, it’s most likely the terminal client you’re using. In PuTTY you can manually adjust the translation option to UTF-8.

To adjust the translation option, follow these steps:

1. Open the PuTTY general configuration.

   

2. In the left Category list section, select Window > Translation.
3. In the dropdown for Remote character set: choose UTF-8.
4. Go back to the ‘Session’ category and make sure to save your current session with all settings.

When you log in again using PuTTY, the non-English characters display correctly.

DreamHost and other ISPs may kill ssh connections that remain idle longer than a certain number of minutes. In PuTTY (for Windows), you are able to adjust that setting in the Configuration box:

1. Open the PuTTY general configuration.
2. In the left Category list section, select Connection.
3. In the field ‘Seconds between keepalives (0 to turn off)', enter 15.
4. Check the box for ‘Enable TCP keepalives (SO_KEEPALIVE option)'.

   

The SSH client asks the server for a sign of life every 15 seconds, thus keeping the connection open.

You may see the following error when connecting:

No supported authentication methods available (server sent public key)

This could be an issue with how the public key was saved. PuttyGen will create a public key file that looks like this:

---- BEGIN SSH2 PUBLIC KEY ----
Comment: "rsa-key-20121022"
AAAAB3NzaC1yc2CAAAABJQAAAIEAhGF6GIuMY8FJ1+CNApnSY1N2YSlkYz72Yvwu
a6N1nFpBklz1+dsIMg4rcTLcF34M/tW5Yz+NUDAw2AEbxQ32FPgw7sAOIXktkYOH
tr7mmimiTjkoSCrJh1kqalPSpi8rglT/Bp67Ql2SZwvUFfMzHISryR0EZC4rXP/u
vObrJe8=
---- END SSH2 PUBLIC KEY ----

The key needs to be saved on a single line. Open the key in PuttyGen and copy it from there and paste it into a program like notepad. This results in the key saved on 1 line:

ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2CAAAABJQAAAIEAhGF6GIuMY8FJ1+CNApnSY1N2YSlkYz72Yvwua6N1nFpBklz1+dsIMg4rcTLcF34M/tW5Yz+NUDAw2AEbxQ32FPgw7sAOIXktkYOHtr7mmimiTjkoSCrJh1kqalPSpi8rglT/Bp67Ql2SZwvUFfMzHISryR0EZC4rXP/uvObrJe8= rsa-key-20121022

Paste this from notepad into the authorized_keys file on your server and it should work. View the following page for a more detailed explanation:

• SSH Public Key - No supported authentication methods available (server sent public key)