Generate Ssh Key For Specific User Guide
Generate Ssh Key For User Ansible
Ssh Generate Private Key
Generate Ssh Key For Specific User Password

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Creating an SSH key on Windows 1. Check for existing SSH keys. You should check for existing SSH keys on your local computer. You can use an existing SSH key with Bitbucket Server if you want, in which case you can go straight to either SSH user keys for personal use or SSH access keys for system use. Open a command prompt, and run. Generating a new SSH key Open the terminal. Paste the text below, substituting in your GitHub email address. When you're prompted to 'Enter a file in which to save the key,' press Enter. At the prompt, type a secure passphrase. For more information. SiteGround uses key-based authentication for SSH. This has proven more secure over standard username/password authentication. More information on SSH keys can be found here. You can generate an SSH key pair directly in cPanel, or you can generate the keys yourself and just upload the public one in cPanel to use with your hosting account.

Password authentication is the default method most SSH (Secure Shell) clients use to authenticate with remote servers, but it suffers from potential security vulnerabilities, like brute-force login attempts. An alternative to password authentication is public key authentication, in which you generate and store on your computer a pair of cryptographic keys and then configure your server to recognize and accept your keys. Using key-based authentication offers a range of benefits:

Key-based login is not a major target for brute-force hacking attacks.
If a server that uses SSH keys is compromised by a hacker, no authorization credentials are at risk of being exposed.
Because a password isn’t required at login, you are able to able to log in to servers from within scripts or automation tools that you need to run unattended. For example, you can set up periodic updates for your servers with a configuration management tool like Ansible, and you can run those updates without having to be physically present.

Generate Ssh Key For Specific User Guide

This guide will explain how the SSH key login scheme works, how to generate an SSH key, and how to use those keys with your Linode.

Note

If you’re unfamiliar with SSH connections, review the Getting Started with Linode guide.

How SSH Keys Work

SSH keys are generated in pairs and stored in plain-text files. The key pair (or keypair) consists of two parts:

A private key, usually named id_rsa. The private key is stored on your local computer and should be kept secure, with permissions set so that no other users on your computer can read the file.
Caution
A public key, usually named id_rsa.pub. The public key is placed on the server you intend to log in to. You can freely share your public key with others. If someone else adds your public key to their server, you will be able to log in to that server.

When a site or service asks for your SSH key, they are referring to your SSH public key (id_rsa.pub). For instance, services like GitHub and Gitlab allow you to place your SSH public key on their servers to streamline the process of pushing code changes to remote repositories.

The authorized_keys File

In order for your Linode to recognize and accept your key pair, you will need to upload your public key to your server. More specifically, you will need to upload your public key to the home directory of the user you would like to log in as. If you would like to log in to more than one user on the server using your key pair, you will need to add your public key to each of those users.

To set up SSH key authentication for one of your server’s users, add your public key to a new line inside the user’s authorized_keys file. This file is stored inside a directory named .ssh/ under the user’s home folder. A user’s authorized_keys file can store more than one public key, and each public key is listed on its own line. If your file contains more than one public key, then the owner of each key listed will be able to log in as that user.

Granting Someone Else Access to your Server

To give someone else access to your server’s user, simply add their public key on a new line in your authorized_keys file, just as you would add your own. To revoke access for that person, remove that same line and save the changes.

Challenge-Response

When logging in to a server using SSH, if there is a public key on file on that server, the server will create a challenge. This challenge will be crafted in such a way that only the holder of the private SSH key will be able to decipher it.

This challenge-response action happens without any user interaction. If the person attempting to log in has the corresponding private key, then they will be safely logged in. If not, the login will either fail or fall back to a password-based authentication scheme.

SSH Key Passphrases

You can optionally provide an additional level of security for your SSH keys by encrypting them with a passphrase at the time of creation. When you attempt to log in using an encrypted SSH key, you will be prompted to enter its passphrase. This is not to be confused with a password, as this passphrase only decrypts the key file locally and is not transferred over the Internet as a password might be.

If you’d like to set up your logins so that they require no user input, then creating a passphrase might not be desirable, but it is strongly recommended nevertheless.

Linux and macOS

Generate a Key Pair

Perform the steps in this section on your local machine.

Create a new key pair.
Caution
This command will overwrite an existing RSA key pair, potentially locking you out of other systems.
If you’ve already created a key pair, skip this step. To check for existing keys, run ls ~/.ssh/id_rsa*.
If you accidentally lock yourself out of the SSH service on your Linode, you can still use the Lish console to login to your server. After you’ve logged in via Lish, update your authorized_keys file to use your new public key. This should re-establish normal SSH access.
The -b flag instructs ssh-keygen to increase the number of bits used to generate the key pair, and is suggested for additional security.
Press Enter to use the default names id_rsa and id_rsa.pub in the /home/your_username/.ssh directory before entering your passphrase.
While creating the key pair, you will be given the option to encrypt the private key with a passphrase. This means that the key pair cannot be used without entering the passphrase (unless you save that passphrase to your local machine’s keychain manager). We suggest that you use the key pair with a passphrase, but you can leave this field blank if you don’t want to use one.

Upload your Public Key

There are a few different ways to upload your public key to your Linode from Linux and macOS client systems:

Using ssh-copy-id

ssh-copy-id is a utility available on some operating systems that can copy a SSH public key to a remote server over SSH.

To use ssh-copy-id, pass your username and the IP address of the server you would like to access:
You’ll see output like the following, and a prompt to enter your user’s password:
Verify that you can log in to the server with your key.

Using Secure Copy (scp)

Secure Copy (scp) is a tool that copies files from a local computer to a remote server over SSH:

Caution

These instructions will overwrite any existing contents of the authorized_keys