Generating an SSH Key on a Mac, Linux or Unix system

If you need to generate an SSH key to make new Closed Captioning requests from your integrated system and/or computer, this article shows how to do that on a Mac, Linux or Unix system.

Generating an SSH Key:

• On a Mac, Linux, or Unix system you can generate a new public-private key pair via the command line (or shell). On the Mac, open Terminal (from Spotlight, type Terminal.app).

• Enter the following command and hit return three times:
  

  cd ~;if [[ ! -d .ssh ]];then mkdir .ssh;chmod 700 .ssh;fi;cd .ssh;ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048

• When asked to name a file in which to save the key, just press return to use the default. Do not assign a passphrase to this key, so when asked, just press return twice. If there are previous generated key files, it will ask you to overwrite or choose a another name (e.g. id_rsa2).

• Then enter in the following command and copy the result to the clipboard:
  

  cat id_rsa.pub

• Now, you can enroll your public key in CaptionSync. Log in to your CaptionSync account and go to Settings -> SSH Keys -> Add Another Key. Paste the key from your clipboard into the new key window; add a description to Note that will allow you to later identify the key. Click Add Key. You may enroll as many keys as you need in your CaptionSync account and enable/disable them as you need.

• If you need to copy the private part of the key too, do:
  

  cat id_rsa

Additional Notes:

• More information about the ssh-keygen command is available in this Lifewire article.

• An SSH public-private key pair allows you to securely log into AST's servers and perform authentication, without having to specify a password. It also allows you to send files via an encrypted network connection. You can add as many key pairs as you need to your CaptionSync account: all pairs are independent and each computer only has information regarding its own pair. Also, you can enable or disable each pair without affecting any of the other pairs.