Creating a key pair
- Open the puttygen.exe file you downloaded when configuring PuTTY. You’ll use this to create your private/public keypair.
- In the PuTTY Key Generator box, make sure the radio button at the bottom is selected for RSA.
- Click the Generate button.
- Move your mouse around the box to help generate the keys.
- Once the key is created, a new pop-up box appears:
- Click both the Save public key and Save private key buttons that appear on the bottom right to save these keys to your computer.
- When you save the public key, name it something like dreamhostpublickey. Do not manually add the extension as that isn’t necessary.
- When you save the private key, name it something like dreamhostprivatekey and be sure to save it in a secure location on your computer. Again, do not manually add the extension as that isn’t necessary.
- When saving, you are prompted with a message about a passphrase. Click Yes to save without a passphrase.
If you’re creating keys for MySQL Workbench
If you’re creating a key pair for MySQL Workbench, you must export the private key in OpenSSH format.
- Click the Conversions tab and select Export OpenSSH key.
- Save this to your computer without an extension.
- You can now use this key to import into MySQL Workbench.
Uploading the public key to your server
- Upload the public key you just created to your DreamHost user’s home directory. You can use an FTP client such as Filezilla to do this.
- Log in to your DreamHost web server through PuTTY.
- Navigate to your user’s /home directory:
[server]$ cd ~
- Create an /.ssh directory by running the following command:
[server]$ mkdir .ssh
- Change the permissions on this directory to 700:
[server]$ chmod 700 .ssh
- While still in your user’s home directory, append the public key you just uploaded to a new file named authorized_keys, which is located in the /.ssh directory by running the following command:
[server]$ ssh-keygen -i -f dreamhostpublickey >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
This appends the dreamhostpublickey you uploaded from your home computer into a new file named authorized_keys. Just make sure the name of the public key file in the command is the name of the file you uploaded.
- Adjust permissions by running the following command:
[server]$ chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
Then, remove the original dreamhostkey.pub file:
[server]$ rm dreamhostpublickey
- The key is saved on the server (protected from access by others).
- Log out of PuTTY and start the program up again.
- Open the configuration box and click the Connection > Data category on the left.
- Enter your DreamHost SHELL username in the first field which is named Auto-login username.
- In the same configuration box, click Connection > SSH > Auth > Credentials.
- Click the Browse button and navigate to the location on your computer where you saved your dreamhostprivatekey file.
- On the configuration box, click the Session category and enter the following:
- Host Name: yourserver.dreamhost.com (This is your DreamHost servername)
- Port: 22
- Connection Type: SSH
- Saved Session: Enter a new name
- Click the Save button.
- Open PuTTY and click the new saved session you created for the passwordless login, then click the Open button.
- You are logged in without a password prompt.
