Taken from here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/60884217/openssh-ssh-2-private-key-old-pem-format-on-azure-linux-vm
You’ve used ssh-keygen to create a private key file called id_rsa.ppk. However this is an OpenSSH-format private key and needs to be converted to Putty’s own format to use in Putty.
Your options are:
- Use this key with command-line SSH (it’s in the correct format). You can either
- specify the file on the command line e.g.
ssh -i id_rsa.ppk azureuser@vm
- make a folder
C:\Users\Aquib\.ssh
and move it there asC:\Users\Aquib\.ssh\id_rsa
(no extension): ssh will now load this file by default to use for all servers that you try to connect to - if you don’t want to use this for all servers, or e.g. if you already have a default id_rsa that you use with git, you can set up a
C:\Users\Aquib\.ssh\config
file that tells SSH where to find the key and tell it which servers it should use it for.
- specify the file on the command line e.g.
- Convert this file into the right format to use with Putty:
- In Puttygen, in the ‘Conversions’ menu choose ‘Import’ and load id_rsa.ppk
- ‘Save private key’ to a different file
- Use this new file with Putty, either on the connection properties menu or run Pageant (the Putty key agent) and ‘Add key’ the new file. (You can e.g. create a shortcut to pageant in your Startup menu and give it the key file name as a commandline parameter so this is loaded automatically for you.)