I'm setting up rsa public key authentication between a Windows client using the putty ssh client and a remote Linux server. I have already created the key pair using ssh-keygen on the Linux server and added the public key to .ssh/authorized_keys
I need to import the private key into the putty client but my problem is getting the id_rsa file from the Linux server to the Windows client. I have tried to cut and paste to a text file on the Windows machine but putty doesn't like it. I have also tried to scp username@windows_machine but could not get it to work.
Anyone have a quick and dirty way to get the private key transfered?
Thanks.

cut and paste over puTTY works just fine. what is actually going wrong?

According to putty documentation:
"If you use ssh-keygen you have to import and save the private with Puttygen because Putty has its own storage format".
When I choose Import Key from Puttygen it asks me for a file name. I did create a text file called id_rsa on my Windows client and cut and paste the private key from ssh-keygen and tried to import to Puttygen but it tells me "Couldn't load private key".
Thanks.

Hey just to check, did you goto the converstion menu and import key rather than trying to just load the key?

Also you can use winscp to connect to the windows system to transfer it in its original form.

http://winscp.net/eng/index.php

Once you have the .ppk then load the .ppk file into pagent and you are ready to go.

Regards

Hi Matt
Yes correct I'm choosing Import Key from the Conversions menu in Putty. thanks for the link to WinSCP. I did come across it during my research but wasn't sure if it was what I needed. So could I confirm with you that by downloading and installing WinSCP on my Windows client I will be able to scp the private key from my Linux box ? Also the private key generated doesn't have the .ppk extension. I generated the key pair from the Linux server rather than through putty.
Thanks.

Update: Just downloaded and installed WinSCP and grabbed the private key without issue and was able to successfully import to putty. Thanks for the help.

RSA should be authorized_keys2.

btw I use puttygen to generate the RSA public key which i then copy the key text and paste to the linux users home directory in:
/home/user/.ssh/authorized_keys2

chown user:user -R .ssh/

and then i load the private key generated by puttygen in Putty's pageant..open putty client ..enter user ,IP : port of linux server and done...simple

Even Winscp can atomatically read the private key from pageant

this is excellent SSH server for Windows

http://freesshd.com/

gr3p
The newer versions of OpenSSH no longer uses the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2 file. All public keys should simply by put into the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file for both SSH protocols 1 and 2 for public key authentication.

cat ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2 >>~/.ssh/authorized_keys