Generate an SSH Key Pair on Oracle Solaris. Complete these steps to generate an SSH key pair on UNIX and UNIX-like systems. Run the ssh-keygen command. You can use the -t option to specify the type of key to create. For example, to create an RSA key, type. The post details out steps to configure passwordless ssh using RSA Public Key Authentication, in other words: passwordless login using public Key. This procedure is used to reduce the number of login prompts needed to do secure remote login with Sun Secure Shell (SSH) this including also SCP ( Secure Copy) and SFTP ( Secure File Transfer). Jun 09, 2018 H ow do I regenerate OpenSSH sshd server host keys stored in /etc/ssh/sshhost. files? Can I safely regenerate ssh host keys using remote ssh session as my existing ssh connections shouldn’t be interrupted on Debian or Ubuntu Linux? How do I regenerate new ssh server keys? How to regenerate new host keys on a Debian or Ubuntu Linux? I'm trying to create an ssh key for another user. I'm logged in as root. If you generate the key for the user you also have to have a secure method of getting the private key and it's pass phrase to the user. Which you could append to the user's /.ssh/authorizedkeys on any destination server.
With a secure shell (SSH) key pair, you can create virtual machines (VMs) in Azure that use SSH keys for authentication, eliminating the need for passwords to sign in. This article shows you how to quickly generate and use an SSH public-private key file pair for Linux VMs. You can complete these steps with the Azure Cloud Shell, a macOS or Linux host, the Windows Subsystem for Linux, and other tools that support OpenSSH.
Note
VMs created using SSH keys are by default configured with passwords disabled, which greatly increases the difficulty of brute-force guessing attacks.
For more background and examples, see Detailed steps to create SSH key pairs.
For additional ways to generate and use SSH keys on a Windows computer, see How to use SSH keys with Windows on Azure.
Azure currently supports SSH protocol 2 (SSH-2) RSA public-private key pairs with a minimum length of 2048 bits. Other key formats such as ED25519 and ECDSA are not supported.
Use the ssh-keygen
command to generate SSH public and private key files. By default, these files are created in the ~/.ssh directory. You can specify a different location, and an optional password (passphrase) to access the private key file. If an SSH key pair with the same name exists in the given location, those files are overwritten.
The following command creates an SSH key pair using RSA encryption and a bit length of 4096:
If you use the Azure CLI to create your VM with the az vm create command, you can optionally generate SSH public and private key files using the --generate-ssh-keys
option. The key files are stored in the ~/.ssh directory unless specified otherwise with the --ssh-dest-key-path
option. The --generate-ssh-keys
option will not overwrite existing key files, instead returning an error. In the following command, replace VMname and RGname with your own values:
To create a Linux VM that uses SSH keys for authentication, specify your SSH public key when creating the VM using the Azure portal, Azure CLI, Azure Resource Manager templates, or other methods:
If you're not familiar with the format of an SSH public key, you can display your public key with the following cat
command, replacing ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
with the path and filename of your own public key file if needed:
A typical public key value looks like this example:
If you copy and paste the contents of the public key file to use in the Azure portal or a Resource Manager template, make sure you don't copy any trailing whitespace. To copy a public key in macOS, you can pipe the public key file to pbcopy
. Similarly in Linux, you can pipe the public key file to programs such as xclip
.
HMAC(Hash-based message authentication code) is a message authentication code that uses a cryptographic hash function such as SHA-256, SHA-512 and a secret key known as a cryptographic key. HMAC is more secure than any other authentication codes as it contains Hashing as well as MAC. Below is a free online tool that can be used to generate HMAC authentication code. We can generate hmac-sha256. With HMAC-SHA signature you don't need a public key. There is one secret key shared by the server (service) and the client that is used to compute the signature. Per the question on the security site referenced above, make sure you have different keys for each client. The secret key is a unique piece of information that is used to compute the HMAC and is known both by the sender and the receiver of the message. This key will vary in length depending on the algorithm that you use. I use Bouncy Castle for the implementation. You can also use this page in HTTPS (SSL).
The public key that you place on your Linux VM in Azure is by default stored in ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub, unless you specified a different location when you created the key pair. To use the Azure CLI 2.0 to create your VM with an existing public key, specify the value and optionally the location of this public key using the az vm create command with the --ssh-key-values
option. In the following command, replace VMname, RGname, and keyFile with your own values:
If you want to use multiple SSH keys with your VM, you can enter them in a space-separated list, like this --ssh-key-values sshkey-desktop.pub sshkey-laptop.pub
.
With the public key deployed on your Azure VM, and the private key on your local system, SSH into your VM using the IP address or DNS name of your VM. In the following command, replace azureuser and myvm.westus.cloudapp.azure.com with the administrator user name and the fully qualified domain name (or IP address):
If you specified a passphrase when you created your key pair, enter that passphrase when prompted during the login process. The VM is added to your ~/.ssh/known_hosts file, and you won't be asked to connect again until either the public key on your Azure VM changes or the server name is removed from ~/.ssh/known_hosts.
If the VM is using the just-in-time access policy, you need to request access before you can connect to the VM. For more information about the just-in-time policy, see Manage virtual machine access using the just in time policy.
For more information on working with SSH key pairs, see Detailed steps to create and manage SSH key pairs.
If you have difficulties with SSH connections to Azure VMs, see Troubleshoot SSH connections to an Azure Linux VM.