Putty

You created a private Putty key on Windows workstation to access a remote service but now you need to access that same remote service from a Mac workstation.  In my case I need to access the same Git repository from both machines.  I created the key using the steps outlined in a previous post.

Quick aside: Before we continue you need to decide if it’s better to copy your private key or just generate a new private/public key pair on the Mac.  If the service you are connecting too does not support multiple keys then you have now choice but to copy it.  Assuming that the service does allow multiple keys then consider these security implications of copying your private key.

I recently had to generate a private/public key pair to access a Git repository.  While I’ve done this several times before I never do it enough to remember all the steps so this time I wrote it down.

Since my primary workstation runs Windows I use PuTTY to generate the keys.  If you thought PuTTY was just a SSH client then you are not alone (e.g. I used to think that too).  PuTTY’s unofficial tag line should be: