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PuTTy Guide

Published on 27th September, 2022.

Introduction

PuTTy is a SSH client for Windows user. In this tutorial, we will cover generating SSH key pair and connecting to CREATE. You can obtain the latest version of the PuTTY from https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/latest.html

Generating SSH key

PuTTY uses ppk format SSH key. https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/latest.html

After you started the PuTTy Key Generator, puttygen.exe

  1. click generate
  2. move the mouse cursor within the PuTTy Key Generator Window. This action is to generate randomness.
  3. Save the public key
  4. Save the private key

Uploading your public key to e-research portal

Your public key should look like the example below:

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---- BEGIN SSH2 PUBLIC KEY ----
Comment: "rsa-key-20220921"
AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQCDTkO6Kd59x0NCqltXD/8WtKoyFZzEijnt
U2tru6fjB5ERASrgd0ZfZ4p7QxOdwyE7FRDMFvGUljkCPhwIJqljeDTeojLrX/8r
pA9zDgB2db3zqvNAku1p2CUCcmTMd19ya02ihTLV70NQptiS2pHplkU35mOKvUj1
sDziNd6zZCKnNesleufILLORNNwlGUKs+jolxB7E3vsKIXQTkcsfi+HXhXWS9tAj
O7nPgw/aJWMNNDzD+Hg2lWeunT690q7sKayv03ONZrnudxHBnzBe4MZ78FOBSZRR
kAKLjkYzRvCJpXbzWEcXXhO1ANx+Ap9lv2UtDemwytmvgu0VkyK5
---- END SSH2 PUBLIC KEY ----

Warning

Do not upload the example SSH key to your e-research portal.

The e-research portal does not accept the PuTTy Key Generator format of SSH key. Some re-formatting is required.

You need to

  1. remove the new lines from your SSH key.
  2. add ssh-rsa at the beginning of your SSH key.

After re-formatting, the first line is 'ssh-rsa' and the second line is your public key (without any new line) It should look like the example below:

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ssh-rsa
AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQCDTkO6Kd59x0NCqltXD/8WtKoyFZzEijntU2tru6fjB5ERASrgd0ZfZ4p7QxOdwyE7FRDMFvGUljkCPhwIJqljeDTeojLrX/8rpA9zDgB2db3zqvNAku1p2CUCcmTMd19ya02ihTLV70NQptiS2pHplkU35mOKvUj1sDziNd6zZCKnNesleufILLORNNwlGUKs+jolxB7E3vsKIXQTkcsfi+HXhXWS9tAjO7nPgw/aJWMNNDzD+Hg2lWeunT690q7sKayv03ONZrnudxHBnzBe4MZ78FOBSZRRkAKLjkYzRvCJpXbzWEcXXhO1ANx+Ap9lv2UtDemwytmvgu0VkyK5

You can upload the re-formatted SSH key to e-research portal.

Connecting to CREATE

After you started the PuTTy, putty.exe

  1. Host Name (or IP address), fill in hpc.create.kcl.ac.uk
  2. click Connection->Data (on left panel)
  3. Auto-login username, fill in user's knumber (without @kcl.ac.uk)
  4. click Connection->SSH->Auth (on left panel)
  5. Private key file for authentication:
  6. click Browse...
  7. select your private key
  8. click open