How to convert SSH keypairs generated using PuTTYgen (Windows) into key-pairs used by ssh-agent and Keychain (Linux)

puttygen supports exporting your private key to an OpenSSH compatible format. You can then use OpenSSH tools to recreate the public key.

1. Open PuttyGen
2. Click Load
3. Load your private key
4. Go to Conversions->Export OpenSSH and export your private key
5. Copy your private key to ~/.ssh/id_dsa (or id_rsa).

6. Create the RFC 4716 version of the public key using ssh-keygen

   ssh-keygen -e -f ~/.ssh/id_dsa > ~/.ssh/id_dsa_com.pub
   

7. Convert the RFC 4716 version of the public key to the OpenSSH format:

   ssh-keygen -i -f ~/.ssh/id_dsa_com.pub > ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub
   

See this and this for more information.

If all you have is a public key from a user in PuTTY-style format, you can convert it to standard openssh format like so:

ssh-keygen -i -f keyfile.pub > newkeyfile.pub

References

• Source: http://www.treslervania.com/node/408
• Mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20120414040727/http://www.treslervania.com/node/408.

Copy of article

I keep forgetting this so I'm gonna write it here. Non-geeks, just keep walking.

The most common way to make a key on Windows is using Putty/Puttygen. Puttygen provides a neat utility to convert a linux private key to Putty format. However, what isn't addressed is that when you save the public key using puttygen it won't work on a linux server. Windows puts some data in different areas and adds line breaks.

The Solution: When you get to the public key screen in creating your key pair in puttygen, copy the public key and paste it into a text file with the extension .pub. You will save you sysadmin hours of frustration reading posts like this.

HOWEVER, sysadmins, you invariably get the wonky key file that throws no error message in the auth log except, no key found, trying password; even though everyone else's keys are working fine, and you've sent this key back to the user 15 times.

ssh-keygen -i -f keyfile.pub > newkeyfile.pub

Should convert an existing puttygen public key to OpenSSH format.

Newer versions of PuTTYgen (mine is 0.64) are able to show the OpenSSH public key to be pasted in the linux system in the .ssh/authorized_keys file, as shown in the following image:

Alternatively if you want to grab the private and public keys from a PuTTY formated key file you can use puttygen on *nix systems. For most apt-based systems puttygen is part of the putty-tools package.

Outputting a private key from a PuTTY formated keyfile:

$ puttygen keyfile.pem -O private-openssh -o avdev.pvk

For the public key:

$ puttygen keyfile.pem -L