I want to access a Windows machine from Ubuntu. I don't want to connect with to the GUI (rdesktop) - instead I want to connect to Windows PowerShell from the terminal.
This is because I want to administer the Windows machine similarly to how you can administer a headless Linux server: running background jobs, writing shell scripts to perform daily/weekly remote maintenance, shutting down/logging off thru shell scripts.
Will rlogin work, and if so how? If not, what other options are there?
There's a commercial proprietary tool called PowerShell SSH Server (read TechNet description) that will let you log in over SSH.
There's also a free proprietary tool freeSSHd - you can run it and replace the standard
cmd
command shell with PowerShell.Finally, if you'd prefer a free software (open source) solution, you can install the Cygwin SSH server and run PowerShell under that. (Apparently this is slower.)
You can also use WinSSHD from Bitvise and set the Terminal shell for each allowed user as "powershell.exe".