Cannot execute commands on Windows server over SSH session with Plink - ssh

Question

I am trying to use Plink for running commands on remote server. Both, local & remote machine are Windows. Though I am able to connect to the remote machine using Plink, i am not able to use the '-m file' option. I tried the following three ways but to no avail:
Try 1:
plink.exe -ssh -pw mypwd john.doe#server -m file.txt
Output:
Could not chdir to home directory /home/john.doe: No such file or directory
dir: not found
'file.txt' only contains one command i.e., dir
Try 2:
plink.exe -ssh -pw mypwd john.doe#server dir
Output:
Could not chdir to home directory /home/john.doe: No such file or directory
dir: not found
Try 3:
plink.exe -ssh -pw mypwd john.doe#server < file.txt
In this case, I get the following output:
Using username "john.doe".
****USAGE WARNING****
This is a private computer system. This computer system, including all
..... including personal information, placed or sent over this system
may be monitored.
Use of this computer system, authorized or unauthorized, constitutes consent
... constitutes consent to monitoring for these purposes.
dirCould not chdir to home directory /home/john.doe: No such file or directory
Microsoft Windows [Version x.x.xxx]
(C) Copyright 1985-2003 Microsoft Corp.
C:\Program Files\OpenSSH>
After I get the above prompt, it hangs. Any help in this regard?

Answer 1

It seems like plink -m is working fine: the commands from file.txt are being sent to the server.
However, your SSH server is running a shell (probably bash because OpenSSH for Windows uses Cygwin) that does not understand the commands you are using, like move and dir. Because bash implements its own versions of those commands (mv and ls, respectively). As you discovered, you need to run cmd.exe /C out of the Windows directory for your SSH server to correctly interpret the meaning of your commands. The other option is to use the bash versions of the commands directly.

Answer 2

This is working now.
plink -ssh -pw xxx john.doe#server cmd.exe /c move c://sample//jd//file.txt c://test//

Answer 3

You are using OpenSSH over Cygwin on your Windows server.
The Cygwin emulates Unix environment on Windows.
So you have to use Unix, not Windows commands (e.g. mv not move or rename)
And you need to use Unix-like paths, not Windows paths (forward slashes in particular).
Moreover, your server seems wrongly configured.
Could not chdir to home directory /home/john.doe: No such file or directory
This is likely an incorrectly configured account. The error is not related to the commands you are executing.