A Practical Approach to Putty SSH Key Setup

You can follow the steps below to create an SSH key with Putty:

Download and Run Puttygen:

First, download and install Puttygen on your computer. Puttygen comes with Putty. You can download it from the official Putty website: Putty Download Page.

Generate Key:

In the Puttygen interface, click on the “Generate” button under the “Key” menu. This will generate a key pair: a private key and a public key.

  1. Fill in Key Information: After the key is generated, you may be prompted to enter your name and other information. You can fill in these details optionally.
  2. Save Keys: Click on the “Save private key” and “Save public key” buttons to save your private and public keys to your computer. It’s important to save the private key to a file (.ppk extension) because it will be used when connecting to the server.
  3. Copy Public Key: To copy the public key, select and copy the text in the “Public key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys file” section.

Add Key to Server:

Log in to your SSH server and add the public key (the copied text) to the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file on your server. This associates the public key with your account and allows you to connect securely.

Configure Putty:

Open the Putty program. Under the “Connection” category in the left menu, go to “SSH” and under “Auth,” browse and select the private key file you saved (.ppk extension).

Initiate Connection:

After configuring the settings, go back to the “Session” tab, enter the IP address of the server and other connection details. Then click the “Open” button to initiate the connection.

By following these steps, you can generate an SSH key using Putty and securely connect to your server.

You can use the same Ssh key by adding it to different servers.
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