Manually generating your SSH key in Windows

Manually generating your SSH key in Windows

On Windows, you can create SSH keys in many ways. This document explains how to use two SSH applications, PuTTY and Git Bash.

PuTTY

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.

About PuTTY

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.

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

Generating an SSH key

To generate an SSH key with PuTTYgen, follow these steps:

1. Open the PuTTYgen program.

2. For Type of key to generate, select SSH-2 RSA.

3. Click the Generate button.

4. Move your mouse in the area below the progress bar. When the progress bar is full, PuTTYgen generates your key pair.

5. Type a passphrase in the Key passphrase field. Type the same passphrase in the Confirm passphrase field. You can use a key without a passphrase, but this is not recommended.

6. Click the Save private key button to save the private key. You must save the private key. You will need it to connect to your machine.

7. Right-click in the text field labeled Public key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys file and choose Select All.

8. Right-click again in the same text field and choose Copy.

Importing your SSH key

Now you must import the copied SSH key to the portal.

1. After you copy the SSH key to the clipboard, return to your account page.

2. Click Create SSH Key and paste your SSH key into the Public Key field.

3. In the Name field, provide a name or description of the key.

4. Submit to add the key. It will now appear in your table of keys under SSH Keys.