SSH, The Secure Shell: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition

Key Management

To manage the key pairs that are used for public-key authentication, use the Keys page (Figure 16-4) of the Settings dialog, which is accessed by either the Settings toolbar icon or the Edit/Settings menu item. The Settings dialog is a GUI-based interface to the functionality provided by the ssh-keygen2 command-line program.

Click Generate New Keypair to start the Key Generation Wizard, which presents a dialog that prompts for the key type (DSA or RSA) and key length, generates the key (this can run for several minutes, which provides plenty of time to appreciate an animated display of random bits), and finally prompts for a filename to store the key, an optional comment, and the passphrase.

To copy a key pair from files in some other location to the user profile folder, click Import. If an existing key is selected, click Export to copy the key pair from the user

Figure 16-3. Terminal window

profile folder to some other folder, or Delete to remove the key pair, or Change Passphrase to present a dialog that prompts for the old and new passphrases.

Click Upload to conveniently transfer a selected public key to a server using sftp, and automatically add an entry in the authorization file so that the key will be used.^[170] This assumes you have already authenticated using some other mechanism. A dialog allows the destination folder and authorization filename to be changed if ...