I'm attempting to use public key authentication with my Linux server. As a client, I'm using SSH Tectia Client 5.0.1.79 (but I'd be glad to upgrade if this will help). As an SSH daemon on the server I'm using the default sshd that comes with Linux. I do not want to change this on the server. I also use Putty as an SSH terminal (it works with emacs quite well), but I like the SFTP capability of the Tectia product (seems to be the nicest SFTP client). I got Putty to work with public key authentication (I had to convert private key formats), but I haven't had any luck with the SSH Tectia Client. I want public key authentication that will work with both Putty and SSH Tectia Client. Right now I can only get Putty to work. The way I am generating the key on the server is using:
and of course I use a passphrase for the private key. I place the public key into .ssh/authorized_keys, and place the passphrase-protected private key on my Windows client. However, I can't get SSH Tectia Client to work with a key generated in this way. Is there an import or conversion process? Am I generating the wrong type of key? How is this done? |
The right way to set up public key authentication is to generate the keys on the client host and distribute the public keys to server hosts. You should never transfer the security critical private key from where it was generated. More recent versions of Tectia Client come with a key generation and upload wizard which makes this rather easy to set up. You can generate the key and upload the public key right from the Tectia Configuration GUI with a couple of mouse clicks. If you were running a Tectia Server, the GUI would be all you need. Since you're running an OpenSSH server, after uploading the public key you need to convert it to a format OpenSSH understands and add it in the
Here |