# SSH authentication on Windows
**URL:** https://discourse.paraview.org/t/ssh-authentication-on-windows/12896
**Category:** ParaView Support
**Created:** [September 20, 2023, 11:04pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/ssh-authentication-on-windows/12896 "2023-09-20T23:04:59Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@woodscn](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/woodscn)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2023, 11:04pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/ssh-authentication-on-windows/12896/1 "2023-09-20T23:04:59Z")
I am trying to set up client-server connections from Windows to an HPC system. The hpc uses an interactive prompt for authentication. According to the docs ( [7. Remote and parallel visualization — ParaView Documentation 5.11.0 documentation](https://docs.paraview.org/en/latest/ReferenceManual/parallelDataVisualization.html#case-twelve-simple-ssh-run-server-command)), the password will be prompted on the terminal used to launch Paraview.
How does this work for a Windows client? The Paraview process doesn’t have an obvious parent terminal, even if it is launched from something like Windows Terminal or Powershell. I see the authentication prompt from the server appear in the Output Messages pane, but it’s not obvious how/where to actually input the password.
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### Author:  [@mwestphal](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/mwestphal)
#### Post date: [September 21, 2023, 6:08am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/ssh-authentication-on-windows/12896/2 "2023-09-21T06:08:17Z")
You can simply use key authentication.
Or use the `SSH_ASKPASS` env var to set a program that will recover the password using a dedicated window. No such program is shipped with ParaView binary release though.
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### Author:  [@woodscn](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/woodscn)
#### Post date: [September 21, 2023, 3:14pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/ssh-authentication-on-windows/12896/3 "2023-09-21T15:14:54Z")
This solves my immediate problem, since I can use key authentication.
Is it worth putting something more specific in the docs? “This might not work in certain cases” seems rather distinct from “This won’t work on Windows without key authentication or custom configuration.”
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### Author:  [@mwestphal](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/mwestphal)
#### Post date: [September 21, 2023, 3:39pm UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/ssh-authentication-on-windows/12896/4 "2023-09-21T15:39:29Z")
That’d make sense to improve the doc in that way, yes. Key authentication should always be preffered whenever possible anyway.
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### Author:  [@todoooo](https://discourse.paraview.org/u/todoooo)
#### Post date: [September 22, 2023, 4:16am UTC](https://discourse.paraview.org/t/ssh-authentication-on-windows/12896/5 "2023-09-22T04:16:07Z")
Perhaps Xming with X11 forwarding would work in this case.
> **[Connecting to HPC via Windows with PowerShell](https://www.wm.edu/offices/it/services/researchcomputing/using/connecting/windows/powershell/)**