Friday, February 12, 2010

Generating rsa public and private keys in linux

Open terminal and run ssh-keygen with below optional params
$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "venkatadapa@gmail.com"
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/venkat/.ssh/id_rsa):
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in /home/venkat/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /home/venkat/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
01:0f:f4:3b:ca:85:d6:17:a1:7d:f0:68:9d:f0:a2:db venkatadapa@gmail.com

Use "ssh-add path/to/my_key" If you want to change the path of the keys to store at Your public key has been saved in /home/venkat/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.

To know more about passphrases just visit http://help.github.com/working-with-key-passphrases/

After finished the above steps an hidden .ssh folder was created in that specified path containing with files id_rsa,id_rsa.pub and known_hosts. id_rsa contains private key. id_rsa_pub contains your public key.

You can use this key for your github account to manage your data from your computer.

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