Generating SSH keys on Linux and Mac

The SSH public key and private key are needed to set up SFTP.

Use the ssh-keygen command to generate the public and private authentication key pair. Authentication keys allow a user to connect to a remote system without supplying a password. The default private and public key files are named id_rsa and id_rsa.pub respectively in the ~/.ssh directory.

Important: Accepted algorithms for the public key are rsa-sha2-512 and rsa-sha2-256.

Procedure

  1. In a terminal, run the ssh-keygen command.
  2. Generate the public/private RSA key pair.
  3. Specify the directory in which to save the key pair. For example, /Users/mymac/.ssh/id_rsa...mysftpkey.
  4. Enter the passphrase. Then, enter the same passphrase again. Enter empty if you don't want to use a passphrase.

    Using the step 3 example, your identification is saved in the mysftpkey file, and your public key is saved in the mysftpkey.pub file in the mysftpkey directory.

    Keep the private key safe because you will need it to upload files to your environment. Before doing so, send the public key to IBM in your onboarding support ticket and the SRE team will place the public key on the server.

What to do next

Send the public key to IBM in your onboarding support ticket and the SRE team will place the public key on the server. Keep the private key safe because you will need it to upload files to your environment.