8.2 Using PuTTYgen, the PuTTY key generator
PuTTYgen is a key generator. It generates pairs of public and private keys to be used with PuTTY, PSCP, and Plink, as well as the PuTTY authentication agent, Pageant (see chapter 9). PuTTYgen generates RSA, DSA, ECDSA, and Ed25519 keys.
When you run PuTTYgen you will see a window where you have two choices: ‘Generate’, to generate a new public/private key pair, or ‘Load’ to load in an existing private key.
- 8.2.1 Generating a new key
- 8.2.2 Selecting the type of key
- 8.2.3 Selecting the size (strength) of the key
- 8.2.4 The ‘Generate’ button
- 8.2.5 The ‘Key fingerprint’ box
- 8.2.6 Setting a comment for your key
- 8.2.7 Setting a passphrase for your key
- 8.2.8 Saving your private key to a disk file
- 8.2.9 Saving your public key to a disk file
- 8.2.10 ‘Public key for pasting into authorized_keys file’
- 8.2.11 Reloading a private key
- 8.2.12 Dealing with private keys in other formats