How do I convert a putty private key to be used as a private key on a RedHat or Ubuntu Server

General Linux Help
1

Hello Team,

I’ve created a public and private key in puttygen that allows me to connect my putty to any of my Red Hat or Ubuntu servers. All my Linux servers have the public key for this private key. I have one windows server with putty on it where I use this one windows server to connect to all my Linux servers successfully using the private/public key.

Now I have one Red Hat server where I would also like to have the ability to connect to any of my Red Hat or Ubuntu servers from this one Red Hat Master Server. Since all my Red Hat and Ubuntu Servers already have this putty generated public key installed, I thought it would make sense to use the same private key I created for putty and convert this so that I can use the same private key from this one Red Hat Master server to all my other Red Hat and Ubuntu servers.

Is this possible to convert my putty private key and install this on Red Hat to do what I need?
If so, what are the steps to convert this private key.
And what are the steps to install this converted private key on a Red Hat Server?

Thank you in advance for any help you can provide me.

2

Hi Greavette,

Welcome to our forums.

puttygen does have a converting feature. Load your private key in it, then use the Export OpenSSH option. This creates a text file that you’ll need to place on the master server. You’ll need to choose the user you set the key for. In the user’s home directory, place the key converted into the .ssh directory, and name it id_rsa. Set the right permissions with:

$ chmod 600 ~/.ssh/id_rsa

You should be ready to test it against any server that is set up for key-based authentication.

1 Like
3

Hello @sandmann and thanks very much for this reply. Very sorry it took me so long to reply to your post and thank you.

Your suggestions worked! Very happy to be able to use my id_rsa key now from my master Linux server to all my client servers using the same putty private key.

For closure I will mention that it’s important to ensure the client server has the following permissions:

chmod 700 ~/.ssh chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Thank you.

4

Hi Greavette,

Thanks for the feedback, I’m happy it worked out well.