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Pulse 2 Secure Agent (SSH) for MS-Windows

Based on the Cygwin Project, The Pulse 2 Secure Agent aims to add a "GNU" compatibility layer on computers running MS-Windows 2000, MS-Windows XP and later (up to MS Win 2008 and Seven), the aim being :

  • to bring an SSH Server (OpenSSH) to platform lacking of it,
  • to simplify administration in a heterogeneous (Unix and Windows) environment.

As such, this software enable Pulse 2 to manage MS-Windows clients as if they where running under a standard POSIX environment, and perform tasks like remote control and deployment.

Installation/upgrade instructions, documentation and packages are available here. Upgrade instructions are available here. Announcements can be found below. See the compatibility chart.

October 6th 2010 - Pulse 2 Secure Agent (SSH) version 2.0.2 is available

This new release of the installer can now handle an SSH public key ("id_dsa.pub" or "id_rsa.pub") in its own directory.

The installer will now search the key in the following directories: current installer directory, C: and then %SystemDrive% (usually means C:).

It's no longer required to copy the key on C: root!

August 17th 2010 - Pulse 2 Secure Agent (SSH) version 2.0.1 is available

This new minor release improves upgrade from previous versions.

All binaries depending on cygwin1.dll are now updated at next reboot to avoid, in some rare cases, having some non-working up to date binaries because they are still running along the old cygwin1.dll.

As usual, installation instructions, documentation and packages are available here. Upgrade instructions are available here.

May 7th 2010 - Pulse 2 Secure Agent (SSH) version 2.0.0 is available

This new release is based upon Cygwin 1.7 and, thus, brings Windows Seven support and improved one for Vista and 2008 Server. All binaries have been updated to provide up-to-date unix tools for your Windows system. See the compatibility chart.

Other changes are more installer related :

  • Better detection of NTFS/FAT filesystems using Cygwin's helpers,
  • Do not use Windows-style paths in Cygwin anymore (suppress warning message),
  • Rewrite the whole installer part that detects user's profile directory to mount it as /home,
  • Various installer improvements to allow upgrade from pulse2-secure-agent-1.2.3.
  • And as usual, all Cygwin binaries have been updated.

As usual, installation instructions, documentation and packages are available here. Upgrade instructions are available here.

October 14th 2009 - Pulse 2 Secure Agent (SSH) version 1.2.3 is available

This release features a tools to better handle NIC information under MS-Windows : pulse2-ether-list.exe . This enable the agent to gather NIC informations using a more reliable source than the usual 'ipconfig', and deal with situations where, on a computer with several NIC, the first NIC is not the main NIC.

Other changes are more installer related :

  • warn and abort installation if the same version is already installed , unless the new flag "/FORCE" is set (see the release notes for more information),
  • permissions enforced on sensitive files,
  • and as usual, all cygwin binaries have been updated.

June 11th 2009 - Pulse 2 Secure Agent (SSH) version 1.2.2 is available

This release fixes two issues :

  • the impossibility to install the agent on FAT32 filesystems (upgrading the agent still worked however),
  • due to some changes in cygssl-0.9.8.dll, wget was un-usable until the host was restarted, this is now cleanly handled.

May 26th 2009 - Pulse 2 Secure Agent (SSH) version 1.2.1 is available

As we were short in time to release the previous "official" version (1.2.0), this announce summarizes new features found in both (1.2.0 and 1.2.1) versions.

The most noticeable feature found in this release is that the Pulse 2 Secure Agent is now fully Microsoft Vista (and Microsoft 2008 Server) compliant. Amongst others, this new version release also features:

  • up-to-date Cygwin tools,
  • Pulse 2 Smart Cleaner scripts introduction.

Please note that the Smart Cleaner scripts are required for the Pulse 2 "smart cleaning mechanism" - which is also due in a few days - to work. Knowing this, people experiencing "file/folder locked" issues on MS win32 platforms MS are invited to update their agents.