Generating a Secure Shell (SSH) Public/Private Key Pair Several tools exist to generate SSH public/private key pairs. The following sections show how to generate an SSH key pair on UNIX, UNIX-like and Windows platforms. Generate keys with ssh-keygen. To create the keys, a preferred command is ssh-keygen, which is available with OpenSSH utilities in the Azure Cloud Shell, a macOS or Linux host, the Windows Subsystem for Linux, and other tools. Ssh-keygen asks a series of questions and then writes a private key and a matching public key.
This guide contains description of setting up public key authentication for use with WinSCP. You may want to learn more about public key authentication or SSH keys instead.
- Configure Server to Accept Public Key
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Before starting you should:
- Have WinSCP installed;
- Know how to connect to the server without public key authentication.
If you do not have a key pair yet, start with generating new key pair.
Connect to your SSH server using WinSCP with the SSH protocol, using other means of authentication than public key, e.g. typically using password authentication.
Once logged in, configure your server to accept your public key. That varies with SSH server software being used. The most common SSH server is OpenSSH.
You can use Session > Install Public Key into Server command on the main window, or Tools > Install Public Key into Server command on SSH > Authentication page page on Advanced Site Settings dialog. The functionality of the command is similar to that of OpenSSH
ssh-copy-id
command.Or you can configure the key manually:
- Navigate into a
.ssh
subdirectory of your account home directory. You may need to enable showing hidden files to see the directory. If the directory does not exists, you need to create it first. - Once there, open a file
authorized_keys
for editing. Again you may have to create this file, if this is your first key. - Switch to the PuTTYgen window, select all of the text in the Public key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys file box, and copy it to the clipboard (
Ctrl+C
). Then, switch back to the editor and insert the data into the open file, making sure it ends up all on one line. Save the file. WinSCP can show you the public key too. - Ensure that your account home directory, your
.ssh
directory and fileauthorized_keys
are not group-writable or world-writable. Recommended permissions for.ssh
directory are700
. Recommended permissions forauthorized_keys
files are600
. Read more about changing permissions.
- Save a public key file from PuTTYgen, and copy that into the
.ssh2
subdirectory of your account home directory. - In the same subdirectory, edit (or create) a file called
authorization
. In this file you should put a line likeKey mykey.pub
, withmykey.pub
replaced by the name of your key file.
For other SSH server software, you should refer to the manual for that server.
When configuring session, specify path to your private key on SSH > Authentication page of Advanced Site Settings dialog.
Alternatively, load the private key into Pageant.
Cloud providers have typically their own mechanism to setup a public key authentication to virtual servers running in the cloud.
For details see guides for connecting to:
Set the login to local, and password to 7. # line vty 0 4(config-line)# transport input ssh(config-line)# login local(config-line)# password 7(config-line)# exitIf you have not set the console line yet, set it to the following values.# line console 0(config-line)# logging synchronous(config-line)# login local5. Create the username passwordIf you don’t have an username created already, do it as shown below.myswitch# config tEnter configuration commands, one per line. Cisco switch generate rsa key. Setup the Line VTY configurationsSetup the following line vty configuration parameters, where input transport is set to SSH.
- Amazon EC2;
- Google Compute Engine;
- Microsoft Azure.
- Using Public Keys for Authentication;
- Using PuTTYgen;
- Understanding SSH Key Pairs.
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.
Supported SSH key formats
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.
Create an SSH key pair
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:
When I try to use the export method of the private key com object it fails, I have tried various combinations of arguments withoutsuccess. HiI am trying to generate a private key using powershell and eventually export it to a pfx file but I have run in to difficulties. Generate private key windows 2008.
When you need to turn off the internet connection. So if you want to install this software I recommend you to mendisable your antivirus first. Photoshop cs3 extended serial key generator.
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:Provide an SSH public key when deploying a VM
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
.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
.SSH into your VM
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.
Next steps
Create Public Ssh Key
- 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.