I need to explain to my users (on Windows platforms) how to create public keys and upload them to my server (on a UNIX platform).

VShell^® supports clients that use the Secure Shell public-key assistant, which allows users to easily upload public keys for use in authentication. If your users are running a client that also supports the public-key assistant (e.g., SecureCRT^® or SecureFX^® ), they can use that application to upload their public keys. Have them follow these steps:

1. Start the client, and connect to the VShell server.
2. Open the client's Public Key Assistant.
3. Create a new public key.
4. Select the newly created public key file and click on the button to upload the public key.
   This will automatically place the key file in the public key folder on the server.

Note: The default folder is $HOME/.vshell/publickey but can be changed by the VShell administrator using the vshelld PublicKeyFolder option.

If your users are on a UNIX machine, they can use the vkeygen key generation program. The vkeygen program comes with vshelld and can create public and private keys using whatever parameters required. For example, the following command line will create a 1024-bit dsa public/private key pair with the file names id_dsa_1024.pub and id_dsa_1024.

vkeygen -b 1024 -f id_dsa_1024 -t dsa 

Note: The values used in the above example are the default values. You could run vkeygen without any options and get the same results.

To upload your public key from one UNIX machine to another, follow these steps:

1. Generate a public key using vkeygen. For this example, the generated public key file will be called id_dsa_1024.pub.
2. Move the public key to the public key folder on the remote VShell server by entering the following command:

vcp ~/.vshell/publickey/id_dsa_1024.pub remotemachine:/.vshell/publickey/id_dsa_1024.pub

Note: Ensure that you are the only user with permissions to write to the id_dsa_1024.pub file.

More information on vkeygen can be found in the vkeygen (1) man page.

VShell, SecureCRT, and SecureFX are registered trademarks of VanDyke Software, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.