Thus, it should be in a location which is easily accessible when making a connection to the server. Every time you connect to the NIX server using your public key, it will validate against your private key. The private key should be saved to your hard drive. However, as of FileZilla 3.5.3, this feature is not implemented. Typically before clicking “Save private key” you would enter a passphrase to secure your private key. This will get around the problem of expired keys. This will allow you to ssh / sftp into the server using your key, and the password of the site is irrelevant. Typically, on a NIX server you create a hidden directory (.ssh) and paste the file contents into a file named authorized_keys. Using the highlighted text above, you can copy and paste that into the file suggested, or click the save public key button. Puttygen – Completion of generated SSH key Once selected (or using the default) click the generate button.

The choice between RSA and DSA is quite the debate in itself as to which is better. You will NOT want ssh version 1, as it has security issues with it’s usage and usually is NOT accepted on alot of servers. For generating a keypair, you’ll notice you have three types of keys to choose from (see figure 1.0 below). You’ll have an option to generate a keypair, or to load a keypair.

You can use this tool to generate an openssh keypair, and use it with putty and/or filezilla. In the case of windows, one can download puttygen (available from Putty Download Page).

The private key stays with you / your machine, and the public key is placed on the various NIX servers you connect to. The generation of a ssh keypair, will cause two keys to be generated. When connecting from a Windows client to a NIX server via ssh / sftp / scp, the usage of ssh keys would come in handy.

Filezilla ssh key passphrase