How can I convert a PEM key into a RSA key pair?

Question

I was just sent a PEM key from a client as a means to access their Amazon EC2 instance. How do I convert this into something I could use with OpenSSH?

Does this [SO question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1011572/convert-pem-key-to-ssh-rsa-format) help? — jw013, Aug 05 '11 at 05:29

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 27 '12 at 19:29

4

You can extract a PEM public key from an OpenSSH private key using:

openssl rsa -pubout -in .ssh/id_rsa

But OpenSSH has no tools to convert from or too PEM public keys (note: PEM private keys are OpenSSH's native format for protocol 2 keys)

edited Jan 27 '12 at 19:29

Kevin

40,087
16
88
112

answered Aug 05 '11 at 08:44

Gopinath Karangula

156
1

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 15 '18 at 21:58

If you were just sent the private key in the form of keyfile.pem (e.g. for Amazon LightSail VPS) then you can just use it directly as an ssh private key:

ssh -i keyfile.pem ubuntu@dest_ip

Or you can add it to your agent like this:

ssh-add ./keyfile.pem

And then login:

ssh ubuntu@dest_ip

How can I convert a PEM key into a RSA key pair?

2 Answers2

Linked