This page aims to provide you with a step-by-step guide on how to use public key authentication to connect to the HLRN.TL;DR:

Summary

1. Create SSH keypair with a passphrase, that is not used anywhere else.
2. Upload the public key on our Service Portal.
3. Specify your new key when connecting to our frontends (either via ssh -i <yourkey> or in your ssh config.

Step-by-step guide

SSH Key Generation

Generating your key differs depending the SSH implementation. The default for Linux and MacOS is OpenSSH. This is also available (without extra installation) in more recent versions of Windows.

OpenSSH

On your local system, run ssh-keygen in the terminal of your choice to create an SSH key pair (type RSA) with a size of 4096 bits. During the key generation process you will be asked for a passphrase to protect the key:

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -f $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa_hlrn
Generating public/private rsa key pair. 
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/user/.ssh/id_rsa_hlrn):                 
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): ************************
Enter same passphrase again: ************************
Your identification has been saved in /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa_hlrn.
Your public key has been saved in /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa_hlrn.pub.  
The key fingerprint is:  
b8:df:d1:14:48:03:00:68:5e:46:9c:1a:b2:b2:d4:f4 user@host  
The key's random art image is:   
+--[ RSA 4096]----+ 
|   +oo....o      |  
|. +.=    . o     | 
| =o=.     . .    |  
|o.o. E .     .   |  
|o.    . S   .    | 
|.      .   o     |  
|      .   . .    |  
|       . . .     | 
|        . .      | 
+-----------------+

coming soon^tm

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