ssh-keygen key conversion questions

Markus Friedl
Wed, 06 Jun 2001 08:13:58 -0000

On Tue, Jun 05, 2001 at 06:21:46PM -0700, Ben Liblit
wrote:
> Using ssh-keygen from OpenSSH-2.9p1, I can perform the following key
> conversions:
>
>   - convert a commercial public key into an OpenSSH public key:
>
>       % ssh-keygen -i -f commercial-key.pub > openssh-key.pub
>
>   - convert a commercial private key into an OpenSSH private key,
>     provided that the commercial key has no password
>
>       % ssh-keygen -i -f commercial-key > openssh-key
>
>   - convert an OpenSSH public key into a commercial public key:
>
>       % ssh-keygen -e -f openssh-key.pub > commercial-key.pub
>       % ssh-keygen -e -f openssh-key     > commercial-key.pub
>
>       (these both do the same thing)
>
> I am left with two questions.  First, the inability to convert
> encrypted commercial keys into similarly encrypted OpenSSH keys is
> unfortunate.  Can anyone give me the standard story on why this
> doesn't work as one might hope?

show us patches :)
i have no idea how they encrypt the key.

however, you can still decrypt the key using the commercial
software.

> Is it simply a feature that is
> waiting to be implemented, or are there deeper intractable issues?

i won't implement this.

> Second, there is one conversion path missing.  How does one convert an
> OpenSSH private key into a commercial private key?

no documentation, no code.

i think openssh's keygen has all features needed for migrating
to openssh.

-m