SCIAMA

High Performance Compute Cluster

Creating an SSH key pair

This article describes how to generate an SSH key on your own machine that can then be used to authenticate your connection to a target machine like the SCIAMA login nodes.

While SSH key generation does not require you to set a passphrase, for important security reason SCIAMA does require its users to only use keys protected with a reasonably strong passphrase. Users who are not obeying this may be held responsible for any damage caused as a result.

Windows

If you are using a Windows desktop, you can use tools like PuTTygen, which is part of the PuTTY software package.

Instructions for using PuTTygen can be found here.

Linux / macOS

If you are using a Linux or macOS desktop then use the command

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096

Try not to use less than 4096 bits to ensure that your key is strong enough.

When prompted make sure you use a secure pass phrase. You should see output similar to:-

You can find the private/public key pair at the location you defined at its creation. You can identify the public key by its suffix ‘.pub’.

Top of Page