On Windows, you can create SSH keys in many ways. This document explains how to use two SSH applications, PuTTY and Git Bash.
Joyent recommends RSA keys because the node-manta CLI programs work with RSA keys both locally and with the ssh agent. DSA keys will work only if the private key is on the same system as the CLI, and not password-protected.
PuTTY is an SSH client for Windows. You can use PuTTY to generate SSH keys. PuTTY is a free open-source terminal emulator that functions much like the Terminal application in macOS in a Windows environment. This section shows you how to manually generate and upload an SSH key when working with PuTTY in the Windows environment.
PuTTY is an SSH client for Windows that you will use to generate your SSH keys. You can download PuTTY from www.chiark.greenend.org.uk.
To generate an SSH key in Windows 10: Ensure the Windows 10 OpenSSH client is installed. Run “ssh-keygen” in Command Prompt and follow the instructions to generate your key. The simplest way to generate a key pair is to run ssh-keygen without arguments. In this case, it will prompt for the file in which to store keys. Here's an example: klar (11:39) ssh-keygen Generating public/private rsa key pair.
When you install the PuTTY client, you also install the PuTTYgen utility. PuTTYgen is what you will use to generate your SSH key for a Windows VM.
This page gives you basic information about using PuTTY and PuTTYgen to log in to your provisioned machine. For more information on PuTTY, see the PuTTY documentation |
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To generate an SSH key with PuTTYgen, follow these steps:
Now you must import the copied SSH key to the portal.
PuTTY and OpenSSH use different formats of public SSH keys. If the text you pasted in the SSH Key starts with —— BEGIN SSH2 PUBLIC KEY
, it is in the wrong format. Be sure to follow the instructions carefully. Your key should start with ssh-rsa AAAA…
.
Once you upload your SSH key to the portal, you can connect to your virtual machine from Windows through a PuTTY session.
The Git installation package comes with SSH. Using Git Bash, which is the Git command line tool, you can generate SSH key pairs. Git Bash has an SSH client that enables you to connect to and interact with Triton containers on Windows.
To install Git:
When the installation completes, you may need to restart Windows.
To open Git Bash, we recommend launching the application from the Windows command prompt:
C:Program FilesGitbinbash.exe
and press Enter.bi publisher desktop download for mac First, create the SSH directory and then generate the SSH key pair.
One assumption is that the Windows profile you are using is set up with administrative privileges. Given this, you will be creating the SSH directory at the root of your profile, for example:
Change into the .ssh directory C:Usersjoetest.ssh
To upload the public SSH key to your Triton account:
When Triton finishes the adding or uploading process, the public SSH key appears in the list of SSH keys.
triton-docker
command line tool.You have seen in previous tutorials how to use PuTTY to connect to your VPS securely and how to create SSH keys with PuTTYgen.
You might have more than one SSH key for a single cloud server, or simply more than one cloud server or Droplet that requires SSH keys to log into. This can make you feel overwhelmed with having to manage, sort out, and link all those keys to their respective servers. That’s why Pageant exists.
Pageant is a PuTTY authentication agent. It holds your private keys in memory so that you can use them whenever you are connecting to a server. It eliminates the need to:
Make sure you have these prerequisites.
Start Pageant from the PuTTY folder: Start-Menu > All Programs > PuTTY > Pageant
Pageant starts by default minimized in the system tray. To begin adding your SSH keys, you should right click on its icon and then the following context menu will show up:
Clicking on Add Key from the menu or View Keys to open up the Pageant Key List window. Here you can view, add, and remove keys:
Tip: You can access the Pageant Key List window directly by double-clicking its icon in the system tray.
Click the Add Key button. This will open the file explorer, where you can choose one or more keys at a time to load. You should select files with the .ppk extension:
Click the Open button to load the keys with Pageant.
If a key is passphrase-protected, you will be prompted to enter the passphrase only once before it can be added to the Pageant Key List:
After successfully adding a key, you can now see it listed:
Now these keys will be available while connecting to any server during your PuTTY sessions. You don’t have to take any extra steps in PuTTY. Just enter your hostname or IP address, and SSH user. PuTTY will automatically try to authenticate using any keys currently loaded in Pageant.
If you want to remove a key from Pageant, select that key from the Pageant Key List window and press the Remove Key button. You can also remove multiple keys together by selecting them with CTRL or SHIFT.
Use these tips to automate your authenticated connections with Pageant.
You can make Pageant automatically load one or more private keys when it starts up, instead of adding them manually every time you start up Pageant.
Go to the Pageant shortcut icon from the Windows Start Menu or your desktop.
What is key generation algorithm. Right click on the icon, and click on Properties.
A new window will open containing the shortcut’s properties:
From the Shortcut tab, edit the Target field. Leave the path to pageant.exe intact. After that path, add paths to your .ppk key files. These should be outside the quotation marks. Here’s an example:
Click the Apply and then OK buttons.
Note: If the keys are encrypted, Pageant will request the passphrases on startup.
You can make Pageant start PuTTY or any other program once it has initialized itself and loaded any keys specified on its command line. That way you can just start Pageant instead of having to start both programs.
You can achieve this by following the same steps we used previously to add the keys automatically (see the previous section). Just add the program’s path at the end of the command in the Target field, preceded by the -c option, and contained within double quotes. Here’s an example of the full line for the Target field:
Here are a few other helpful applications that can work with PuTTY.