Generate A Ppk Public Key On Mac

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PuTTYgen is a tool used for generating public and private SSH keys which are its fundamental function. Though it collects keys in its own file format i.e. .ppk files, keys can also be transformed to any other file format quickly. It is available for the various operating system, i.e. Windows, Linux, Mac, etc. PuTTYgen.exe is the graphical tool on Windows OS. While on the other side, Linux OS has the only command-line version.

Contents

  • 2 Download PuTTYgen
    • 2.1 Download PuTTYgen on Windows
    • 2.2 Download PuTTYgen for Mac
    • 2.3 Download PuTTYgen for Linux

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 Windows operating system:

The goal of this article is to guide users to generate and load SSH keys into SourceTree using PuTTY. To generate an SSH Key, select Tools Create or Import SSH Keys. This window should pop up: 2. Click Generate, and move the mouse randomly until a key is generated: 3. A public key and a private key should appear. Run it on your local computer to generate a 2048-bit RSA key pair, which is fine for most uses. Ssh-keygen The utility prompts you to select a location for the keys. By default, the keys are stored in the /.ssh directory with the filenames idrsa for the private key and idrsa.pub for the public key. Creating a new key pair for authentication. To create a new key pair, select the type of key to generate from the bottom of the screen (using SSH-2 RSA with 2048 bit key size is good for most people; another good well-known alternative is ECDSA). Then click Generate, and start moving the mouse within the Window. Putty uses mouse movements to collect randomness.

  1. Once you install the PuTTY on your machine, you can easily run PuTTYgen. For the same, go to Windows -> Start Menu -> All Programs -> PuTTY -> PuTTYgen.
  2. You will see the PuTTY key generator dialog box on your screen
  3. You will find a “Generate” button in that dialog. Clicking on it will lead to generating the keys for you.
  4. Now you will need to add a unique key passphrase in the Key passphrase and Confirm passphrase field.
  5. Click on the “Save Public Key” and “Save Private Key” buttons to save your public and private keys.
  6. You will see the text starting with ssh-RSA in the Public key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys file field which is located at the top of the window. Copy that entire text to your clipboard by pressing ctrl+c as you will require the key to paste on your clipboard in the public key tool of control panel or directly on the cloud server.

Various Ways to Use RSA Key Pair

RSA key pair generated through PuTTYgen is used in two various ways defined as below:

  1. To assign while creating a new cloud server
    You can choose the public key from the given list of keys at the time of creating cloud server. If you don’t find your key in that list, then first add and then assign it.
  2. Assign to an existing cloud server
    At the time of connecting to the cloud server, first of all, you need to tell PuTTY to use it for utilizing your newly created RSA key pair.

The installation of PuTTYgen is very simple as it is installed as a part of normal PuTTY .msi package installation. 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.

Download PuTTYgen on Windows

The very first requisite is to acquire the copy of PuTTY installation package. If your system is of 64-bit, then you should install a 64-bit version of PuTTY, i.e. putty-64bit-<version>-installer.msi. In case of a 32-bit operating system, you will need to install the 32-bit version of PuTTY, i.e. putty-<version>-installer.msi

Go to PuTTY Installation Download page, where you will find the download link of PuTTY installation package with the exhaustive details of its installation, setup instruction, verifying release signature, various alternatives, many more.

Once the PuTTY installation package is downloaded successfully, now it’s time to install it by starting the installer. Go to How to install PuTTY on Windows where you will find the step by step guidance for PuTTY installation for Windows operation 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:

Run PuTTYgen on Windows

1. Go to Windows -> Start Menu -> All Programs -> PuTTY -> PuTTYgen. You will see a window for PuTTY Key Generator on your screen.

That’s it. Now you can generate public or private key pair using PuTTYgen.

Download PuTTYgen for Mac

You can find the step by step guide to download PuTTYgen for Mac operating system. Command-line SSH client is a part of the Mac operating system. 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.

Ported PuTTY for Mac

Mac has the port of PuTTY which can be installed in various ways described as below:

  1. Installation using Homebrew:
    Use the below-given command to install PuTTY in case you have already installed “brew”command.sudo brew install putty
  2. Installation using MacPorts:
    PuTTY is easily available through MacPorts. First of all, install MacPorts and then apply the below-given command.

    sudo port install putty    Use the below-given command to add the shortcut on the desktop.cp /opt/local/bin/putty ~/Desktop/PuTTY
  3. Alternatives to PuTTY on Mac OSCyberduck, used by many people on Mac OS is the best SSH Client is the ultimate alternative to PuTTY on Mac OS.

Download PuTTYgen for Linux

In order to download PuTTYgen for Linux (Ubuntu) operating system, one required to install PuTTYgen separate from the PuTTY client in case of some Linux distributions.

For example, Debian Linux requires the below-given code to install PuTTYgen:

sudo aptitude install putty-tools

Generate Key Pair for Authentication in Linux

Use the below command to create the key pair for authentication in Linux.

PuTTYgen -t RSA -b 2048 -C “user@host” -o keyfile.ppk

Various Command Line Options of PuTTY in Linux

Below is the list of important command line options for PuTTY in Linux operating system.

Generate Ppk File From Pem

PuTTYgen [-t keytype [-b bits] [-q] keyfile]
[-C new-comment] [-P]
[-O output-type -p -l -L]
[-o output-file]

Options:

  1. Keyfile – It is the name of the existing key file to read at the time of changing the current key.
  2. -t keytype – This command specifies the type of the key to creating. Its acceptable values are RSA and dsa.rsa1.
  3. -b bits – This command specifies a total number of bit in a particular key. 1024 is the perfect size for DSA key, while 2048 or 4096 are the perfect size for RSA keys.
  4. -q – This command suppresses the message about progress at the time of key generation.
  5. -C new-comment – This command is used to specify the comment to describe the key. It can be used for new and/or existing key. Key operation is not affected by comment. However, it is used to recognize the key owner, it’s not reliable completely as any value can be applied to it.
  6. –P – This command is used to update the passphrase of a key. Passphrase helps to encrypt the private key. As passphrase can’t be add or update on command line, it prompts a new passphrase tool to alter it.
  7. –old-passphrase-file – The old password of the key remains in this file. This is used when the key is protected by a passphrase.
  8. –new-passphrase file – This file entails the new passphrase of the key. This command comes in the action either at the time of generating new key or while applying –P command to change the passphrase.
  9. -O output-type – This command defines what to give in output. By default, the private key is the output.

Thus, above are the prominent commands of PuTTYgen in Linux operating system. There are many other commands also available to perform a various task from the command prompt in Linux at flank speed.

With PuTTYgen you can generate SSH key pairs (public and private key) that are used by PuTTY to connect to your server from a Windows client. The private key will be stored on your local machine, while the public key has to be uploaded in your dashboard. When connecting with PuTTY, your session loaded with your private key will generate a signature which will be authenticated by the server using the matching public key.

Step 1: Download PuTTYgen

Simply download and save the PuTTYgen executable (.exe) file from this link. Since it’s a standalone application, you will not need to perform any installation steps for it.

Step 2: Generate SSH Key

  1. Open PuTTYgen.
  2. Select these parameters:
    • Jelastic requires an SSH-2 RSA (recommended) or SSH-2 DSA key
    • The number of bits can be either 2048 or 4096 (recommended). This defines the strength of the key and its resistance to brute-force attacks.
  3. Click the Generate button.
  4. Move your mouse randomly within the empty area to generate your key until the progress bar fills up.
  5. In the next screen you can see the following:

    6. Your Public Key

    You can copy and paste this key directly to your Jelastic dashboard. To see how to add your public key to Jelastic, please see: How to connect to Jelastic using PuTTY

    Your Key Fingerprint

    In this field you should enter something to help you remember what you will use this key for. For example if you are going to use this key pair to connect to your Jelastic environments, you could enter ‘Jelastic’ here.

    Key passphrase

    Viva pinata product key generator. Here you can set a password you can use to encrypt your Private Key. While this is not mandatory, it is strongly recommended to ensure that nobody from your workstation will be able to connect to your server without knowing the passphrase.

    If you are using SSH for scripts, you will need to leave the Key passphrase field empty.

Step 3: Save your SSH key

You can either copy and paste your public key into the Jelastic dashboard, or you can click the ‘Save public key’ button to save the file on your computer. You can open it with a simple text editor, like Notepad.

You should save the private key on your computer as a .ppk (PuTTY Private Key) file.

Step 4: Load a previous SSH key

If you would like to change the comment or passphrase for an existing SSH key, or you would simply like to view the fingerprint or maybe save another copy of the public key, you can always load your SSH key in PuTTYgen.

  1. Open PuTTYgen.
  2. Click Load
  3. Select your SSH Private Key file.
  4. Enter your passphrase if prompted and click OK.
  5. You will see the Public key, fingerprint and related information in the PuTTY Key Generator window.
Generate A Ppk Public Key On Mac

Private Key To Ppk

Important: If you make any changes, don’t forget to save your Private key!