Generating an SSH Private Key

Use the following guidelines to generate a private/public key-pair for use with Robo-FTP if you don’t already have one. Private keys may be created using the Robo-FTP configurator as shown here.

 1. Generate a public-key / private-key-pair.

You can do this with Robo-FTP's built-in key generator. You can also use any other compatible SSH key generator utility such as the one distributed with the commercial product by SSH Communications Security (http://www.ssh.com) or the one distributed with the free OpenSSH (http://www.openssh.org).

 2. Let Robo-FTP know about your private key.

If you generated your key using Robo-FTP, then it already knows about your private key.  If you used another key generator utility, you need to tell Robo-FTP about it by browsing to it using the Configure SSH tab in the Robo-FTP configurator.

 3. Let the server know about your public key.

Your public key should have been saved to a file by the key generation utility.  The contents of your public file must be added to a file on the server which, in turn, is used by the SSH server to determine which keys to use for authentication. Generally, this file is called authorized_keys or authorized_keys2, and is stored in the .ssh sub-directory of your home directory on the server.

Robo-FTP actually creates three types of public keys. These are suitable for SSH1, SSH2, and OpenSSH servers. Each public key file is named with an appropriate file name extension.

Check with the system administrator of the server to which you are connecting to verify the name of this file and its location, and for the best way to relocate your public key to the server.