SSH, the secure shell, is often used to access remote Linux systems. But its authentication mechanism, where a private local key is paired with a public remote key, is used to secure all kinds of online services, from GitHub and Launchpad to Linux running on Microsoft’s Azure cloud.
Aug 09, 2018 Generate SSH Keys on Windows 10 with PuTTY. To generate a key pair with the PuTTY key generator, simply run andputtygen.exe click the Generate button in the window that appears. You will be asked to move the mouse and press keys to improve the. Aug 19, 2019 1. To manually add the public SSH key to the remote machine, you first need to open the content from the /.ssh/idrsa.pub file: cat /.ssh/idrsa.pub. As in the image below, the key starts with ssh-rsa and ends with the username of the local computer and hostname of the remote machine. Jul 20, 2019 Welcome to my first official guide on Dev.to. Today I want to explain how you can setup SSH and Git on your Windows 10 computer. Note: This is not about 100% securing your keys but about how to generate keys for use with GitHub. Creating an SSH key on Windows 1. Check for existing SSH keys. You should check for existing SSH keys on your local computer. You can use an existing SSH key with Bitbucket Server if you want, in which case you can go straight to either SSH user keys for personal use or SSH access keys for system use. Open a command prompt, and run.
Generating these keys from Linux is easy, and thanks to Ubuntu on Windows, you can follow the same process from Windows 10. But even without Ubuntu, SSH keys can also be generated with the free and open source Windows application, PuTTy
Over the following few steps, we’ll guide you through the process of generating SSH keys using both Ubuntu on Windows and PuTTY.
All you need is a PC running Windows 10 and either of the following installed:
puttygen.exe
executable from PuTTYIf you don’t already have Ubuntu on Windows, take a look at our Install Ubuntu on Windows 10 tutorial.
PuTTYgen is a key generator tool for creating pairs of public and private SSH keys. It is one of the components of the open-source networking client PuTTY. Although originally written for Microsoft Windows operating system, it is now officially available for multiple operating systems including macOS, Linux. PuTTYgen.exe is the graphical tool on Windows OS. While on the other side, Linux OS has the only command-line version could be accessible using SSH commands.
The key generation utility – PuTTYgen can create various public-key cryptosystems including Rivest–Shamir–Adleman (RSA), Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA), Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA), and Edwards-curve Digital Signature Algorithm (EdDSA) keys.
The aforementioned public-key cryptosystems principally focus on secure data transmission and digital signatures.
Although PuTTYgen collects keys in its native file format i.e. .ppk files, the keys can easily be converted to any file format. For Windows, the software interface is PuTTYgen.exe, whereas, for Linux OS the command-line adaptation is available using SSH commands.
PuTTYgen is used to generate public or private key pair for creating SSH keys. Below is the complete guidance about how to generate RSA key in the Windows operating system:
Various Ways to Use RSA Key Pair
RSA key pair generated through PuTTYgen is used in two various ways defined as below:
PuTTYgen being a component of the terminal emulator PuTTY does not have to be downloaded separately, hence, comes with the PuTTY .msi installation package. You can follow the simple steps to download PuTTYgen software for your system. That is the reason why you don’t need to download PuTTYgen separately. Once you download PuTTY software, you will be able to install and run PuTTYgen easily in no time. Below is the complete instruction about how to download and install PuTTY on Windows.
Apart from that, it is also integrated into third-party programs such as WinSCP installation package. Below you can find a complete PuTTYgen download and installation guide for all operating systems.
To download PuTTYgen the primary requisite is to acquire the copy of PuTTY installation package. For the 64-bit operating system, one must install the 64-bit version of PuTTY, i.e. putty-64bit-<version>-installer.msi.Similarly, for the 32-bit operating system, the respective 32-bit version of PuTTY, i.e. putty-<version>-installer.msi needs to be installed.
To get PuTTY, go to PuTTY Installation Download page, whereby the complete installation package will be available with setup instructions, installation guide, and download links to all other components of PuTTY such as putty.exe, pscp.exe, psftp.exe, puttytel.exe, plink.exe, pageant.exe and putty.zip.
Following the successful download of the PuTTY installation package. It is time to install the program. Go to How to install PuTTY on Windows, whereby you will find the step by step guidance for PuTTY installation for Windows operating system.
After successfully downloading and installing PuTTY on your Windows machine, you are just 2-3 clicks away to run PuTTYgen. Follow the below-given step by step guidance to run PuTTYgen:
To run PuTTYgen, Go to Windows -> Start Menu -> All Programs -> PuTTY -> PuTTYgen. You will see a window for the PuTTY Key Generator on your screen.
Voila! Now you can generate public or private key pair using PuTTYgen.
Below is the detailed guide to download PuTTYgen on Mac operating system. Mac OS has a built-in command-line SSH client known as Terminal. To utilize it, go to Finder and then opt for Go -> utilities from the top menu. After that find the terminal which supports SSH connections to remote servers.
However, to run PuTTYgen for mac, the first one must have to install PuTTY. There are multiple ways to install PuTTY, which are Homebrew or MacPorts. Both alternatives will also install the command-line of adaptations of PuTTYgen.
Mac has the port of PuTTY which can be installed in various ways described as below:
sudo brew install putty
sudo port install putty
–cp /opt/local/bin/putty ~/Desktop/PuTTY
However, there is an alternative way to install PuTTY on Mac OS. Cyberduck is a widely used Mac OS SSH Client. Once PuTTY installed on the Mac OS, a user can convert PuTTY derived private key format to OpenSSH.
To convert the private key to standard PEM format, type the following command –
puttygen privatekey.ppk -O private-openssh -o privatekey.pem
You can also read the guide to convert .pem file to .ppk using puttygen.
To download PuTTYgen for Ubuntu (Linux) operating system, a user to first install PuTTY. However, in some Linux distributions, the SSH key generation tool – PuTTYgen needs to be installed independently from the PuTTY client.
For example, Debian Linux requires the below-given code to install PuTTYgen: Key word generator for internet search.
sudo apt install putty-tools
To create the key pair for authentication in Linux use the below command:-
puttygen -t rsa -b 2048 -C 'user@host' -o keyfile.ppk
Below are few important command line options in the Linux operating system for PuTTY:
PuTTYgen [-t keytype [-b bits] [-q] keyfile]
[-C new-comment] [-P]
[-O output-type -p -l -L]
[-o output-file]
Options:
Thus, above are the prominent commands of PuTTYgen in Linux operating system. Besides that, there are many other commands available to perform various tasks from the command prompt in Linux at flank speed.
It is important to know the types of key PuTTYgen supports prior to using it. Below are the key types that it currently supports for SSH-2 and SSH-1 protocol:-
The above description is a detailed brief on downloading and running PuTTYgen on all major operating systems. For further details please check the Download PuTTY page.