I’ve discussed this before, but this time I’m focusing on another angle. When interacting with commercial SSH implementations (such as exists on OpenVMS and Tru64 implementations) it becomes useful to know how to convert your OpenSSH public keys to SSH2 format and vice versa.
These examples will assume that you are using OpenSSH and are on a UNIX system. Note that these are public keys, not private keys. All key types (DSA, RSA) should convert fine, but DSA is the stronger cryptographic algorithm.
One you have a public key in the appropriate format, you can add it to the authorized keys file (whatever that may be called). This is normally found in ~/.ssh or ~/.ssh2 depending on the SSH version.
The OpenSSH utility ssh-keygen is what makes this happen. This utility can do a lot more than just generate keys. It can be used to change passphrases of encrypted keys; convert keys; generate public keys from private OpenSSH keys; and read and write keys to smartcards.
Converting an SSH2 key to OpenSSH
To use an SSH2 public key in OpenSSH, it needs to be converted. Use the ssh-keygen utility in this manner:
ssh-keygen -e -f ~/.ssh/id_dsa_ssh2.pub > ~.ssh/id_dsa.pub
Converting an OpenSSH key to SSH2
Using an OpenSSH public key in SSH2 requires a conversion; ssh-keygen can do this:
ssh-keygen -i -f ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub > ~/.ssh/id_dsa_ssh2.pub
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