Deltacopy over ssh not working after setup

First published on 12 March 2011.

So you're trying to backup your Windows PC using deltacopy, likely using a Unix / Linux machine for the storage.

You've set the things up, created a public / private key but it's not working. The thing seems to start, and nothing happens. You're sniffing on the server side, you see the connection establishing, and some tls traffic, but nothing seems to happen. The connection stays opened, and nothing happens. What the hell ?

Remember that ssh maintains a list of known servers to detect man-in-the-middle attacks. So the first time you connect to a server, it enters an interactive dialog to ask you if you're okay to connect to this particular server. May be you skipped this part (I did !).

Start cmd.exe to get a console, then go to the directory where you installed deltacopy (in my case \Program Files\backup). ssh.exe should be here. Then run from the prompt

ssh my-backup-server

You'll be asked if you want to connect to the server. Answer "yes", the question won't be asked again and your installation should work.

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