Generate a SSH key Pair (Public and Private) and Use it with putty

• The common way for access to IFCA cluster is a non passwd based. It has been proved that the use of

ssh key access avoid most part of security issues aswell to forgot the passwd.

Download Putty

• You can download the Putty ssh from http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html

  • Download the Putty.exe Agent

  • Download the puttygen.exe

Generate the key pairs

• Lunch puttygen.exe
  • Type of key to generate: SSH-2 RSA
  • Number of bits in a generated key: 1024
• Click on the “Generate” button to create your key pair
• After finish you can choose to use the keys with or without passphrase
  • Save the Private key (you can call it privatekey)
    • Remenber that you have to keep it in a save place and not share it with no-one
  • Save the Public key (you can call it publickey)
    • This is the key that you have to exchange/install in the machine you want to access, if do not have the enough priveilegies to do this, you can send it to your system administrators.

Install the Key

• Run Puuty.exe

• In the “Category” section on the left, scroll down and under Connection > SSH, select the “Auth” option. Where it says “Private key file for authentication:” click on the “Browse” button and find the private key you generated previously and click the “Open” button to load it. The text field should now be filled in with the path to your private key.

• In the “Category” section, select the “Session” option towards the top of that list of options. Fill in the “Host Name” field with your account hostname (your account domain or IP address will also work).
• To save this profile for later so you don’t need to do this each time you connect, type a name for this session in the “Saved Sessions” text field on the lower half of that screen. Then, click on the “Save” button to the right and the session will now be saved for later (it will show up where “Default Settings” is showing). Next time you connect to the server, you would simply select the session you created and then click on the “Load” button, and then select the “Open” button at the bottom to load that saved session.

Send the Public Key

• Remember you only have to send the publickey file never, never the privatekey. The sysadmins will install it on the machines you have to access