Creating SSH Keys (Command Line)

Create a key pair for your computer.

To log in into other Aspera servers with public key authentication, you can also create key-pairs in command line. Follow these instructions:

Note: You can also use the application GUI to create SSH keys or import existing keys for use with a selected user account. For instructions, see Creating SSH Keys.

Create .ssh folder in your home directory
Create a .ssh folder in your user account's home directory if it does not exist:
```
$ mkdir /Users/<user name>/.ssh
```
Navigate to the .ssh folder and continue:
```
$ cd /Users/<user name>/.ssh
```
Use ssh-keygen to generate an SSH key-pair
Run the following command in the .ssh folder. The program prompts you for the key-pair's filename. Press ENTER to use the default name id_rsa. For a passphrase, you can either enter a password, or press return twice to leave it blank:
```
$ ssh-keygen -t rsa
```
Retrieve the public key file
When created, the key-pair can be found in your home directory's .ssh folder (assuming you generated the key with default name id_rsa):
```
/Users/(user name)/id_rsa.pub
```
Provide the public key file (for example, id_rsa.pub) to your server administrator, so that it can be set up for your server connection.
Start a transfer using public key authentication with ascp command
To transfer files using public key authentication in command line, use the option -i private-key-file. For example:
```
$ ascp -T -l 10M -m 1M  -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa  my/files  jane@10.0.0.2:space
```
In this example, you are connecting to the server (10.0.0.2, directory /space) with the user account jane and the private key ~/.ssh/id_rsa.