How to Generate SSH Key Pair on local machine (my computer)

Posted on January 16, 2016

Hello,

I’m following this tutorial: digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/initial-server-setup-with-ubuntu-14-04

In step four “Add Public Key Authentication” it says “To generate a new key pair, enter the following command at the terminal of your local machine (ie. your computer)”

I enter “ssh-keygen” in my “command prompt” and receive the following error:

C:\Users\bkozlowski>ssh-keygen ‘ssh-keygen’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

What am I doing wrong?

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Kyle Warwick-Mathieu

January 16, 2016

Hi @bkozlowski, welcome to the community.

I have just the answer for your question. The tutorial you saw was assuming that both the host and the server machines ran linux.

ssh-keygen is a UNIX only command and of course doesn’t work on a Windows computer.

There is a way around this using a program called PuTTYGen. I have a video on youtube that shows how to use it and then use PuTTY+Pagent to load your ey in and connect to the server. I also show how to add the key to the server from a Windows computer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0BrVHZBViY&ab_channel=EverythingAppleProJr

Please let me know if you have any questions

-BeanJr

Kamal Nasser

January 17, 2016

Hi,

These commands are for Linux/OS X systems. Since you’re running Windows, you’ll need to use PuTTy gen to generate the SSH keys and PuTTy to SSH into your Droplet.

Check out this tutorial: