Question: Thanks for the tutorial on “How to login to Linux instance using keys“. I used PPK key file via PuTTy to login to my Linux instance. Could you tell me how to convert PPK file into OpenSSH keys format, so that I can login to my instance using SSH command on Linux as below:
$ssh -i key centos@ip-address
Answer:
Since you have the .PPK file ready, let us convert that into a format that OpenSSH supports.
On CentOS:
Install PuTTY tools as below:
$yum install putty :::::::::::::::::: Running Transaction Installing : putty 1/1 Installed: putty.x86_64 0:0.63-4.el5 Complete!
On Ubuntu:
Install PuTTy using apt-get as below:
# apt-get install putty ::::::::::::::::::::: Setting up putty-tools (0.63-4ubuntu0.1) ... Setting up putty (0.63-4ubuntu0.1) ...
Convert .PPK format to OpenSSH file format
Extract Public key and Private Key using PuTTy tools.
$ puttygen key.ppk -O private-openssh -o private.key
$ ls -l private.key -rw------- 1 test test 1675 Dec 1 17:02 private.key
$ puttygen key.ppk -O public-openssh -o public.key
$ ls -l public.key -rw-rw-r-- 1 test test 402 Dec 1 17:03 public.key
Set right permission for the keys as below:
$ chmod 600 private.key $ chmod 644 public.key
Use OpenSSH key to login to your instance as below:
$ ssh -i private.key centos@ip-address.
That’s it.
Use PuTTY keygen on Windows to convert PPK to OpenSSH keys
Install PuTTY keygen and simply load the PPK file as shown in the below image. Once done, you can save the public and private key files.
