Making an ssh key

The most popular ssh programs are OpenSSH for unix and PuTTY for Windows.

Some other programs are SecureCRT and xshell.

• tutorial on making keys in xshell
• tutorial on making keys in SecureCRT

OpenSSH

1. If openssh is not already installed, on Debian/Ubuntu try

   aptitude install openssh-client

   or on Redhat/CentOS

   yum install openssh-clients

   or download the portable source from openssh.org and compile it. When OpenSSH is setup you can generate a key and try to login.

2. $ ssh-keygen
   Generating public/private rsa key pair.
   Enter file in which to save the key (/home/nick/.ssh/id_rsa): /home/nick/thesshkey
   Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): 
   Enter same passphrase again: 
   Your identification has been saved in /home/nick/thesshkey.
   Your public key has been saved in /home/nick/thesshkey.pub.
   The key fingerprint is:
   20:78:b9:01:15:3a:43:60:7b:7b:55:b3:7f:3b:a5:20 nick@theclient
   The key's randomart image is:
   +--[ RSA 2048]----+
   |.oo.o.   o       |
   |...+ .  . o      |
   | .=.= .. .       |
   |  .+.+..  .      |
   |   ...  SE o . . |
   |    .     . o +  |
   |             +   |
   |              .  |
   +-----------------+
   

   If you use the default key filename /home/nick/.ssh/id_rsa ssh will try to use it automatically.

3. Email the public key (in this case /home/nick/thesshkey.pub) to support@prgmr.com with your username and other information.
4. Once your account is setup with the public key, login to the server with your private key:

   nick@theclient:~/prgmr$ ssh -i /home/nick/thesshkey asdfasdf@theserver
   

PuTTY

1. Download the PuTTY installer and install it.
2. Run PuTTYgen:
3. Generate a key:
4. Enter a passphrase for the private key.
5. Save the public and private key files
6. Email the public key file to support@prgmr.com.
7. Set the private key file in PuTTY (run PuTTY from the start menu instead of PuTTYgen)
8. Then save the setting to the Default Settings or a new profile under Saved Sessions and enter a hostname or username@hostname.
9. Press open to connect to the server.