How to Configure Putty to Auto Logon

1- Introduction

This document describes how to configure Putty session so you can logon to Linux AIX automatically without typing ID or Password.

2- Requirements before proceeding

You should have full Putty package installed on your local machine, including Puttygen and Pageant.

3- Order of Operations and Commands

1. Run Puttygen, click “Generate” to create Public Key and Private Key pair, keep all settings as default.

2. Save Public key and Private key files. Private key files will be saved as “*.PPK”. Do NOT put in passphase if you don’t’ want to type password, but make sure you save your private key file in a safe place.

3. Highlight all the content in the “Public Key” field, copy to the clipboard.

4. Logon to Linux AIX server, goto your home folder, create a folder called “.ssh” and file “authorized_keys” file underneath, paste the clipboard content to the file. Make sure the folder and file access level don’t open to public, and the content is in one line.

[user@server ~]$ ls -ld .ssh
drwx------ 2 user user 4096 Sep 19 16:25 .ssh
[user@server  ~]$ ls -la .ssh
total 12
drwx------ 2 user user 4096 Sep 19 16:25 .
drwx------ 3 user user 4096 Sep 19 16:26 ..
-rw------- 1 user user  398 Sep 19 16:25 authorized_keys
[user@server  ~]$

5. Click Pageant, you will see the icon in the system tray.

6. Click “add Key”, find the Private Key you just created,

7. Click “View Keys”, you should see the key entry listed.

8. In RDM session, you may have to type your Linux ID. For your local saved Putty session, you can save your ID, so you don’t have to type the ID.

9.  Autoload private keys into pageant when it starts

  

Create a shortcut to put it in the startup folder (or use regedit to autostart pageant shown in step 10)

Right-click the shortcut and select properties

Modify the Target: section and add something similar to:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\putty\pageant.exe" "C:\Program Files (x86)\putty\paul.ppk"

You can add multiple keys on the pageant command line like this if you have multiple PPK files

"C:\Program Files (x86)\putty\pageant.exe" "C:\Program Files (x86)\putty\paul.ppk" "C:\Program Files (x86)\putty\paul2.ppk"

10.  How to automatically start Pageant when Windows starts

Open your registry and find the key [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run].

For each program you want to start automatically create a new string value using a descriptive name, and set the value of the string to the program executable.