PuTTY uses a slightly different public key format than other SSH clients like OpenSSH. Remember, id_rsa.txt is your public key and id_rsa.ppk is your private key. Never share your private key with anyone! If someone has your private key and can guess your password, they will have access to every computer you have ever logged in to with it.
Now that you have an SSH key pair, you need to upload your public key to your account. Your files are actually saved in %localappdata%\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\PuTTY. The reason for this is that PuTTYgen does not have permission to save files in that folder unless it is run with Administrator privileges. When you save your public and private keys, they appear to save in C:\Program Files (x86)\PuTTY, but when you look in that folder, they aren’t there. If you installed PuTTY using the MSI installer, you may notice something odd. Keep PuTTYgen open, as you will need the public key at the top “for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys file”. Click Save private key and name the file “id_rsa.ppk”: Now, click Save public key and name the file “id_rsa.txt”. Set your Key passphrase, then type the same passphrase again in Confirm passphrase: It can even be something as silly as correct horse battery staple. A long simple passphrase is harder for hackers to guess than a short difficult to remember password. This means that your passphrase can be several words separated by spaces. Otherwise, anyone who steals your laptop now has access to our clusters through your account! Note that PuTTY requests a “passphrase”, not a “password”. We require your SSH key to be passphrase protected. PuTTYgen will ask you to move your mouse around the window area to supply this random data: This prevents other people from creating the same SSH key pair, even if they know your passphrase. SSH keys are created using random data for security purposes. Under Parameters, make sure the key type is set to RSA and the number of bits is set to 4096: If you manually downloaded puttygen.exe, go to your Downloads folder and double-click the application to launch it.
#Putty download copy directory install#
If you used the MSI installer package to install PuTTY, simply press the Windows key, type “puttygen”, and hit Enter to launch it. In order to generate an SSH key pair, you will be using PuTTYgen. This package comes with several different tools, including SCP and SFTP clients, but all you really need to get started is PuTTY and PuTTYgen. It should be safe to accept all of the default settings. Once it finishes downloading, simply double-click the installer in your Downloads folder. This provides a familiar setup wizard that will guide you through the installation process. We recommend the latest release version of the Windows MSI installer package. You’ll notice that there are several different downloads to choose from. If you haven’t already installed PuTTY, head to the official PuTTY Download Page.
#Putty download copy directory how to#
This page provides instructions on how to generate an SSH key pair and log in to the LCRC clusters for the first time using PuTTY.