Linux Generate Pem Key Pair

Posted By admin On 04.05.20

In AWS, when you launch any EC2 Linux instance, you should select a key pair for that particular instance.

Convert the.pem private key file to a.ppk key file. Start PuTTYgen. PuTTYgen 0.71 is used as an example. In the Parameters area, set Type of key to generate to RSA and then click Load. Select All Files (.) from the drop-down list. Select the.pem private key file to be converted. In the PuTTYgen Notice dialog box, click OK. The simplest way to generate a key pair is to run ssh-keygen without arguments. In this case, it will prompt for the file in which to store keys. In this case, it.

AWS key pair will be in the standard private key format with .pem file extension

But if you are using PuTTY on your Windows laptop to login to AWS instance, you have a problem.

PuTTY doesn’t support PEM format. PuTTY understands only it’s own PPK format.

Linux Generate Pem File

Openssl rsa -in private.pem -outform PEM -pubout -out public.pem. The -pubout flag is really important. Be sure to include it. Next open the public.pem and ensure that it starts with -BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-. This is how you know that this file is the public key of the pair and not a private key. Connecting to linux using ppk or pem file DOWNLOAD & Install PuTTY. If you have not already downloaded (or cannot locate) your key pair (i.e mykeypair.pem) you will need to create a new EC2 instance and download a new one. A key pair consists of a public key that AWS stores and a private key file that you store (downloaded as PEM file). You can generate an SSH key pair directly in cPanel, or you can generate the keys yourself and just upload the public one in cPanel to use with your hosting account. When generating SSH keys yourself under Linux, you can use the ssh-keygen command.

PPK stands for Putty Private Key.
So, you should convert your .pem file to .ppk file.

For this conversion, putty provides a tool called PuTTYgen.

1. Download AWS PEM file

In AWS, when you first create a key pair file, that you want to use for your EC2 instances, AWS will allow you to download the PEM file to your local machine. Save this PEM file somewhere on your machine.

In this example, the .pem file I have is called thegeekstuff.pem, which is under C drive.

We’ll be converting this thegeekstuff.pem file to thegeekstuff.ppk and use the .ppk to login to EC2 instance using PuTTY.

BTW, the steps to convert pem to ppk for putty is exactly the same for all the Linux AMI images, including CentOS, RedHat, Ubuntu, SuSE, Fedora, Amazon Linux, etc.

2. Download PuTTYGen

Download PuTTYgen from here.

If you’ve used the PuTTY MSI installer, then all the PuTTY utilities comes with it including puttygen.

If you are already using only putty.exe as a standalone, then you can also download the standalone puttygen.exe

Launch PuTTYgen by double clicking on it.

PuTTYGen is a RSA and DSA key generation utility. But, in our case, we’ll be using this to convert the pem to ppk file.

The main PuTTYGen screen will have the following three sections:

Key Section: This will display the current key that is loaded. i.e The key that you are currently working on. When you first launch the puttygen, this section will say “No Key”.

Actions Section: This section will display all the possible actions that you can perform inside PuTTYGen. The following are the available actions:

  1. Generate – This will let you generate a brand new public/private key pair
  2. Load – If you already have an existing private key, you can use that by loading it here
  3. Save – Once you’ve generated a new key, or loaded an existing key, you can save either the public-key or the private-key to your local machine. Initially the save buttons will be disabled, as we have not loaded a key yet.

Parameters Section: Here you’ll specify the type of key to generate. You have three options here: SSH-1 (RSA), SSH-2 (RSA), SSH-2 DSA. You can also set the value of number of bits for the generated key. By default the type will be SSH-2 (RSA) and 2048-bit.

For our purpose of converting PEM to PPK, leave all the parameters at their default value. i.e SSH-2 (RSA) and 2048 bit.

See also: 10 Awesome PuTTY Tips and Tricks You Probably Didn’t Know

3. Load PEM file to PuTTYGen for Conversion

In the following PuTTYGen main screen, click on “Load” button, and select your AWS PEM file.

Please note that when you click on “Load”, in the file selection window, by default, it will show “PuTTY Private Key Files (*.ppk)” as the option. Click on this drop-down list and choose “All Files” as shown below. After this, you can browser to the directory where you *.pem file is located, and load it.

Once the *.pem file is loaded, you’ll get a pop-up message saying “Successfully imported foreign key (OpenSSH SSH-2 private key)”. Click on “OK” in this screen.

4. Save your Converted PPK Private Key

Now that we have the keys loaded, you’ll see in the top “Key” section, our key information will be displayed. This will display the key fingerprint, key comment. The key passphrase in this case will be empty, as we didn’t have any passphrase for our AWS PEM file in this example.

Also, in the action section, we’ll see the save button enabled.

Click on the “Save Private Key” button, to save our converted ppk private key.

This will display a warning message saying: “Are you sure you want to save this key without a passphrase to protect it?”. Click on “YES”.

Now, give a name to this file. In our case, I’ve named this converted file as thegeekstuff.ppk

MPE support. 8 bit vst plugin. Cross-Legato mode for seamless cross-fadingpitch bendings.

5. Use the PPK File in PuTTY

Now, that we have the thegeekstuff.pem AWS PEM file converted to thegeekstuff.ppk PuTTY key file, we can use this to login to our AWS EC2 instance.

For this, launch the putty, and do the following:

First, in the “Host Name (or IP address)” field, enter the public-dns or ip of your AWS EC2 instance.

Second, in the “Saved Sessions” field, enter the name that you would like to give for this AWS-EC2-instance on your putty, and click on “Save” to save this sessions in your putty list.

Third, on the left-hand side panel, expand the “Connections” -> expand “SSH” -> select “Auth”. Click on “Browse”, and select your converted ppk file for the “Private key file for authentication” as shown below.

Fourth, at this stage you can click on “Open” to start the connection, but you’ll lose the values that you just entered. So, on the left-panel click on “Sessions” again, and click on “Save” again. This will save the information about the private key that you provided to the putty-session that you saved earlier.

6. PEM and PPK File Formats

Once you’ve converted the file, you can view the content of PEM and PPK file in a text editor, and you’ll see that the content looks different, as they are of different formats.

PEM Key File from Aamazon EC2 (e.g: thegeekstuff.pem)

The PPK file format (e.g: thegeekstuff.pem). This is the file that we converted using PuTTYGen tool. This is the keyfile format that will work on your PuTTY to login to your Amazon AWS EC2 Linux instance using SSH protocol as shown above.

> Add your comment

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like.



Next post: 8 PostgreSQL Examples to Install, Create DB & Table, Insert & Select Records

Previous post: 8 Steps to Install MirthConnect with MySQL / MariaDB on Linux

There are many reasons you might want to create a key pair on Linux, more specifically on Ubuntu.

For more information about key pairs, see this.

If your server is an Amazon EC2 Server Instance, you might want to look at more specific information here

Key pairs are just one way to log into a system. (Perhaps the one you currently use is regular username and password ssh login). Key pairs are generally more secure than password logging in.

Linux Generate Pem Key Pair Key

One thing you have to keep in mind is that using key pairs is a two-way method: you'll need to create a private key and a public-key.

Personally, I use them so I can use git remotely. Another very common use of public/private key pairs is when you want to, for example, scp a file from your local server into a remote server without needing to type the ssh password lots of times. Another good reason to use this is to disable anyone from logging into your server, which reduces the chance someone will break into your server.(I'm not an expert on security so do you own research before securing your web server, as it's a very important step.)

Linux Generate Pem Key Pair Number

Ok so let's start: Ubuntu has a very handy way to accomplish this:

Create yourself a .ssh directory if you don't already have one.

Then type this command to create the key per se:

(you'll be prompted for a passphrase. It adds another layer of security still. You can choose one or leave it blank.)

cd to your home folder to check the key has been created:

You should see two files: id_rsa and id_rsa.pub.

Now you'll need to transfer the public key (the .pub file) to your remote server. Again, Ubuntu has a simple command to do this:

If the last step was successful, you should be able to log into your server with no password (only from this machine, of course!. Ubuntu will use the private key wev'e just created to authenticate.)

Linux Generate Pem Key Pair Key

et voilà

How To Generate Pem

troubleshooting: if a command isn't working, try issuing that command again with sudo.

Linux Generate Pem Key Pair Code

see also: official ubuntu docs