|
You can use PuTTY to generate your SmartMachine SSH key. PuTTY is a free open-source terminal emulator that functions much like the Terminal application in Mac OS X in a Windows environment. If you prefer a command line approach to SSH, you can use Cygwin to emulate a Linux-like environment on your Windows machine. In this topic: |
At a Glance
This topic 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 http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/.
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 official PuTTY documentation. |
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. Type the same passphrase in the Confirm passphrase field. You can use a key without a passphrase, but this is not recommended.
- 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. - Right-click in the text field labeled Public key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys file and choose Select All.
- Right-click again in the same text field and choose Copy.
Uploading an SSH Key
Now you need to upload the copied SSH key to your Cloud Management portal.
- After you copy the SSH key to the clipboard, return to the Cloud Management portal.
- In the SSH Key field, paste your SSH key.
- In the Name field, provide a name for the key.
Providing a key name is optional but is a good practice for ease of management. - Click the Add this key button. See below.
| PuTTY and OpenSSH use different formats of public SSH keys. If the text you pasted in the SSH Key starts with ---- BEGIN SSH2 PUBLIC KEY, it is in the wrong format. Be sure to follow the instructions carefully. Your key should start with ssh-rsa AAAA.... |
Once you upload your SSH key to the portal, you can connect to your virtual machine through a PuTTY session.
What is my next step?
The final step is to provision a machine and start using the Joyent Public Cloud!