Webantix

OK I always chickened out of creating a key in Linux as it is so easy in windows using PuTTYgen. But one day I decided to find out exactly how to do it in Linux and “Oh My God” it is even easier. I mean really simple. So simple that I was shocked and thought I had to of got this wrong.

So you have your admin user setup in PGP Universal. If you navigate to it via Users>>Administrators then click on the name of your admin. The admin user will need to be a SuperUser.

PGP Universal Admin properties

Now back to your linux distro. As in the title I have used Ubuntu but I’m sure you will be able to do most of this in different distros. First you need to make sure you have the SSH client installed.

$sudo apt-get install openssh-client

OK now you have installed that it’s time to create the key pair. And yes it is this easy.

$ssh-keygen

Follow the on screen questions. Basically where you want to save it and the pass phrase you want to give the private key. I would suggest using the default for where to save and for pass phrase use a nice and complicated phrase.  Make sure you do not leave the pass phrase empty!!!

!!!DO NOT SHARE YOUR PRIVATE KEY OR PASSPHRASE!!!

That’s it your key pair has been created. Told you it was simple. Now to upload it to your PGP Universal server.

Go back to your user page and click the add next to the SSHv2 Key box. This will launch a new pop up. In the pop up click on browse and select your newly created public key

PGP Universal Public Key import

Once this has been completed you can type in the console

$ssh admin-name@keys.domain.com

Obviously change admin-name to the user you have just uploaded the key too and keys.domain.com to the IP or FQDN of your PGP Universal server.

Finally once you have ssh’d to the PGP Universal server. You will need to log in as root and use the password you have set in your private key.  Once you are there it is basically a normal Linux box. Do remember though that if you make any changes that your box could not be supported and any updates applied may get over written.

Source of info during research

http://www.debuntu.org/ssh-key-based-authentication