WinSCP

What is WinSCP?

WinSCP is a SFTP/SCP client for Windows. For more information on SFTP you can read our article about sftp.

WinSCP is free, anybody can download it and use it as they wish. The point of the program is to allow safe transfer of files between different machines.

Installing WinSCP

You can download the latest version of WinSCP from their homepage.

The installation is pretty straight forward, but one thing you should be aware of is when you come to "Initial user settings". Here you're choosing what interface you want to use in WinSCP. We recommend that new users choose the "Norton Commander interface", because this is far more intuitive for new users and has a nice drag-and-drop interface for uploading and downloading files.

When you're done with the installation and you start WinSCP you will get a login window similar to the one below. To connect to your home directory on NTNU you write login.stud.ntnu.no or login.ansatt.ntnu.no for employees in the "Host name" box, and your username in the "Username" box. For security reasons you should not write your password in the "Password" box on this screen, you will be asked for it later.

When you've entered that information you can press "Save" at the bottom of the window, and these settings will be saved. You will be prompted to give a name for these settings, here you can use what ever you would like, for example "Home directory on NTNU" ("Hjemmekatalog på NTNU" is used in the picture as the name). If you do not wish to save the settings you can just press "Login" at the bottom of the window, and you will login.

If you save the settings you will get a list over stored sessions. The name you gave your settings should be present on this list. You choose this and press "Login", and you will start logging in. You will be asked to give your password, and here you can write it, it will not be saved.

When you are logged in you will come to the userinterface where you can transfer files. If you chose "Norton Commander interface" during the installation your user interface should look similar to the one in the picture below.

On your left side are files on the computer you're currently working, and on the right side are files on your home directory on NTNU. Now you can drag-and-drop files between these windows, and they will be transfered.

One thing you should be careful with while using WinSCP is that you use the blue backwards arrow ( ) when you want to go back in the directory on NTNU, not the ".." folder which navigates you up one level in the filesystem. The reason for this is that if you go to your public_html directory and press ".." you wont get back to your home directory, but to the folder where all the homepages of students on NTNU lies. Because of the wast number of students at NTNU this will very likely result in WinSCP having to load for a long time, or on slower machines simply crash.

File permissions

When you upload files with WinSCP the file permissions will by default be set to rw-r--r--, meaning everybody has access to read the files and only you have access to write to them. Nobody has access to execute them. If you want to change file permissions to any of your files you can do this with WinSCP. You simply rightclick the file you wish to change and press Properties. If you want to read more about what the different file permissions mean, you can read our article on webpermissios.

For files in your home directory you don't want other people to read you should remove the crosses in the boxes behind Group and Others.

You can make WinSCP set other file permissions on the files you upload with the program automaticly. You do this by pressing "Options" on the top menu, and selecting "Prefrences". Press "Transfer" in the list on the left side. Here you have a box called "Upload options". If you check the "Set permissions" box you can choose what file permissions that will be set automaticly on the files you upload.