What is PuTTY
PuTTY was developed by Simon Tatham and is a very common light-weight MIT-Licensed
free and open source Secure Shell (SSH) client for connecting to Linux/Unix systems via a Teletype (TTY) terminal emulation mode console.
Currently there are ports for Microsoft Windows, other unix like systems,
and ports in progress for Mac OSX and Symbian mobile phone OS.
PuTTY fits into that class of tools we affectionately call Swiss Army Knives because it is
Light, Multi-Purpose, and Good Enough. As an added benefit it is free and open source with a generous license so it is commonly embedded in
commercial apps.
PuTTY comes in handy both as an SSH terminal console and as a SSH Tunneling tool which allows you for example
to use PgAdmin III from a local windows workstation against a remote PostgreSQL server even in cases where the linux/unix PostgreSQL pg_hba.conf and postgresql.conf file only allow local connections or non-SSH traffic is blocked by
firewall.
For more about the nuances
of configuring the pg_hba.conf PostgreSQL server file that controls user access check out Hubert Lubaczewski's “FATAL: Ident authentication failed”, or how cool ideas get bad usage schemas
http://www.depesz.com/index.php/2007/10/04/ident/
In this article we shall cover how to use PuTTY's SSH Tunneling feature to access a remote PostgreSQL server that doesn't allow
remote connections. To make it a little more interesting we shall demonstrate how to do this for PgAdmin III.
