Creating a new VM with an SSH key for root
You can set up one or more SSH keys for root login when you create new virtual machines (VM) on a Power cloud instance. The keys are loaded into the root’s authorized_keys file. SSH keys allow you to securely log in to a VM. You must use the available operating system options to create SSH keys. To generate SSH keys on a Linux® or Mac OS system, for example, you can use the standard ssh-keygen tool.
Setting up an SSH key to be used in a VM create
In this example, the user created a public key on a Linux-based GCP compute instance by using the ssh-keygen tool:
> $ cat .ssh/id_rsa.pub
ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQCtuQnQOc2k4zaGzE7b3xUMCjUy++s/9O9HE4fXSm7UNKoTY39zjQ8mhOwaA3HEo12tOdzdFDYHHWNOYufCcFFk61CAL6HyQGGClib1nFc1xUcgTI9Dee8zzaAsN8mIIr1CgbRELhvOsTv23U4QddpfjkcVoKfF0BAtxgauvooQdPZBoxa2rsD+BvcWnjglkYWG2aBbuzFvSl1fLMihjfej8w1lxbcsYEcJg2X96NJPLmLsEJ+XwoXfVuv0X4z8IoBzZ8UbyTlrDv73EAH34GViYfZFbrIaNnwnz/f/tuOKcINihH72YP+oZn9JeiHQ+hKpMqJAmOK2UIzYr3u+79n9 testkey
To use an SSH key with a VM create operation, you must first add the public key to the cloud instance by using the pcloud compute sshkeys create command. To add the ssh-keygen-generated public key, enter the following command (replacing the public key value with your own):
Important: You must enclose the --publickey value in quotations.
$ pcloud compute sshkeys create testkey --publickey "ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC
1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQCtuQnQOc2k4zaGzE7b3xUMCjUy++s/9O9HE4fXSm7UNKoTY39zjQ8mhOwaA3HEo12tOdzdFDYHHWNOYufCcFFk61CAL6HyQGGClib1nFc1xUcgTI9Dee8zzaAsN8mIIr1CgbRELhvOsTv23U4QddpfjkcVoKfF0BAtxgauvooQdPZBoxa2rsD+BvcWnjglkYWG2aBbuzFvSl1fLMihjfej8w1lxbcsYEcJg2X96NJPLmLsEJ+XwoXfVuv0X4z8IoBzZ8UbyTlrDv73EAH34GViYfZFbrIaNnwnz/f/tuOKcINihH72YP+oZn9JeiHQ+hKpMqJAmOK2UIzYr3u+79n9 testkey"
SSHKey created: testkey
To confirm that the key was successfully added, use the pcloud compute sshkeys list command.
$ pcloud compute sshkeys list
Name Key CreationDate
testkey ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1y...UIzYr3u+79n9 testkey 2019-07-26T18:21:56.030Z
Creating a VM instance with a configured SSH key
Now that you’ve added the key to the cloud instance, you can create a new VM with the key by using the following command:
$ pcloud compute instances create keytest-vm -i AIX-7200-03-03 -t shared -p 0.5 -m 5 -n gcpnetwork -k testkey
The preceding VM create operation resulted in a new AIX VM with an IP address of 172.16.7.16. You can now SSH to the AIX VM can from a connected system, which is configured with the private key for testkey. In the following example, the connecting system is a GCP x86 compute instance with direct connectivity to the Power cloud instance network.
$ ssh root@172.16.7.16
Enter passphrase for key '/home/keytest/.ssh/id_rsa':
Last login: Fri Jul 26 16:53:22 CDT 2019 on ssh from 10.150.0.11
*******************************************************************************
* *
* *
* Welcome to AIX Version 7.2! *
* *
* *
* Please see the README file in /usr/lpp/bos for information pertinent to *
* this release of the AIX Operating System. *
* *
* *
*******************************************************************************
# oslevel -s
7200-03-03-1914
#
On this AIX VM, you can find the testkey value in the authorized_keys file.
> \# cat .ssh/authorized_keys
ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQCtuQnQOc2k4zaGzE7b3xUMCjUy++s/9O9HE4fXSm7UNKoTY39zjQ8mhOwaA3HEo12tOdzdFDYHHWNOYufCcFFk61CAL6HyQGGClib1nFc1xUcgTI9Dee8zzaAsN8mIIr1CgbRELhvOsTv23U4QddpfjkcVoKfF0BAtxgauvooQdPZBoxa2rsD+BvcWnjglkYWG2aBbuzFvSl1fLMihjfej8w1lxbcsYEcJg2X96NJPLmLsEJ+XwoXfVuv0X4z8IoBzZ8UbyTlrDv73EAH34GViYfZFbrIaNnwnz/f/tuOKcINihH72YP+oZn9JeiHQ+hKpMqJAmOK2UIzYr3u+79n9 testkey