Menu
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.
- Generate Ssh V2 Key Windows 9
- Generate Ssh Key Windows Git
- Generate Ssh V2 Key Windows 8
- Generate Ssh Key Windows
- Sep 26, 2019 Generating an SSH key. To generate an SSH key with PuTTYgen, follow these steps: Open the PuTTYgen program. For Type of key to generate, select SSH-2 RSA. Click the Generate button. Move your mouse in the area below the progress bar. When the progress bar is full, PuTTYgen generates your key pair. Type a passphrase in the Key passphrase field.
- An SSH Key allows you to log into your server without needing a password. SSH Keys can be automatically added to servers during the installation process. Creating an SSH key on Windows. The simplest way to create SSH key on Windows is to use PuTTYgen. Download and run PuTTYgen. Click the 'Generate' button.
Enter a key comment, which will identify the key (useful when you use several SSH keys). Type in the passphrase and confirm it. The passphrase is used to protect your key. You will be asked for it when you connect via SSH. Click 'Save private key' to save your private key. Click 'Save public key' to.
- Configure Server to Accept Public Key
Advertisement
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.
Generate Ssh V2 Key Windows 9
- 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.
Generate Ssh Key Windows Git
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:
Generate Ssh V2 Key Windows 8
- Amazon EC2;
- Google Compute Engine;
- Microsoft Azure.
Generate Ssh Key Windows
- Using Public Keys for Authentication;
- Using PuTTYgen;
- Understanding SSH Key Pairs.