Configuring SSH Keys on Linux and Mac OS X

From OpenLP

Linux and Mac OS X both come with support for SSH and SSH keys out of the box. Launchpad uses SSH keys to authenticate your computer with your Launchpad account. This guide shows you how to get that done.

Contents 1 SSH Keys 1.1 Public Key 1.2 Private Key 1.3 Generating a Keypair 2 Launchpad & SSH 2.1 Adding Your Public Key to Launchpad

SSH Keys

The first thing you need to do is generate your SSH keypair. A keypair, as the name implies, consists of 2 parts: the public key and the private key.

Public Key

Your public key is placed on remote servers so that they can check back with you to see that you are who you say you are.

Private Key

Your private key should NEVER leave your computer! This is the main file that authenticates you. It contains the special unique data that identifies you.

Generating a Keypair

Generating a keypair is very easy.

1. Open a terminal
2. Type in the following:

   $ ssh-keygen -t dsa

3. Accept the defaults, to save your public and private keys to ~/.ssh
4. Open your public key (~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub) in a text editor (GEdit or Kate on Linux, TextEdit on Mac OS X)

Launchpad & SSH

Like I said before, when you use Launchpad and Bazaar, it likes to use the SSH keys to authenticate you. We need to add our public key to Launchpad.

Adding Your Public Key to Launchpad

1. Open your browser to Launchpad and log in
2. Go to your home page and click on the Change details link
3. Click on the SSH Keys tab (Note: Not the OpenPGP keys!)
4. Paste that public key into the text box at the bottom of the page
5. Click the Import Public Key button at the bottom of the page

And you're done!