How to SSH to a virtual machine on Mac OS

Question

How to SSH to a virtual machine on Mac OS

innoaca-0016 20

https://learn.microsoft.com/ko-kr/azure/virtual-machines/linux/quick-create-portal?tabs=ubuntu

I created a virtual machine based on the instructions on the page above.

After creating the virtual machine, you want to make an SSH connection from your local host to the virtual machine.

On the page I posted above, and on the MS Azure virtual machine page, the connection section says that I need a .pem file.

However, when I created the SSH key, it downloaded a .cer file.

How do I connect?

Do I just replace the .cer file with the .pem file and connect?

I tried to connect by replacing the .cer file with a .pem file, but it didn't work.

How do I link it? Please explain how to link it.

Thanks

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KapilAnanth-MSFT 49,536 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2023-09-01T05:11:05.82+00:00
@innoaca-0016

Welcome to the Microsoft Q&A Platform. Thank you for reaching out & I hope you are doing well.

I understand that you only have a .cer file from the SSH Key Pair.

This is strange.

AFAIK, Azure SSH Key Pair only has the capability to create a .pem file and not a .cer file.

What I would recommend is,

Reset the VM to Password authentication

From the VM Page in Portal, navigate to Reset Password

And then you can login as the user just using password

Or

Reset the VM's public SSH Key

Create a new SSH Key Pair in Azure.

Download the Private Key (.pem format only) while Azure prompts you to do so - You cannot do it after this

Copy this Key Pair's public Key

Now navigate to the VM and click Reset SSH Public Key

Then try to access the VM using the new key's private key (.pem file)

In case this is a new set up, you can simply create a new VM and delete the old one too.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Kapil

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KapilAnanth-MSFT 49,536 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2023-09-01T05:11:05.82+00:00

@innoaca-0016

Welcome to the Microsoft Q&A Platform. Thank you for reaching out & I hope you are doing well.

I understand that you only have a .cer file from the SSH Key Pair.

This is strange.

AFAIK, Azure SSH Key Pair only has the capability to create a .pem file and not a .cer file.

What I would recommend is,

Reset the VM to Password authentication

From the VM Page in Portal, navigate to Reset Password

And then you can login as the user just using password

Or

Reset the VM's public SSH Key

Create a new SSH Key Pair in Azure.

Download the Private Key (.pem format only) while Azure prompts you to do so - You cannot do it after this

Copy this Key Pair's public Key

Now navigate to the VM and click Reset SSH Public Key

Then try to access the VM using the new key's private key (.pem file)

In case this is a new set up, you can simply create a new VM and delete the old one too.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Kapil

Answer 1

msrini-MSFT 9,291 Microsoft Employee

Hi,

For Linux VMs, you have 2 options, one is to use Public key and another way is to use password as Windows VMs.

If you don't have any dependencies with using Public Keys, you can use Password. if you do have dependency, you can use Azure Cloudshell to generate key, store the key in Azure ssh key and use them.

Regards,

Karthik Srinivas

innoaca-0016 20 Reputation points

2023-09-04T12:15:50.0133333+00:00

Thanks for the answer.

I tried again and it connected.

When creating an SSH Key, if I don't configure it (don't modify the name), it's downloaded as 'myKeyName.cer'.

chmod 400 ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pem
ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pem test3User@ip

It says to do it like this,

chmod 400 ~/myKeyName.cer
ssh -i ~/myKeyName.cer test3User@ip

After doing this, I got an SSH connection.

I have an additional question.

1.
Is my environment special that it downloads in .cer format?

Why is the default format .cer?

2.
Doesn't the format of the private key matter?

Specifically, does it not matter if it is .cer or .pem?

When I generated and downloaded the SSH key, I renamed it to keyName.pem and it worked.

However, as mentioned above, I was able to connect with the .cer I received without modification.

Doesn't it matter if it's .cer or .pem?

Does name.cer or name.pem just identify them all by name?

If you know more about this, please explain.

Thanks

I've attached an image of the key I used.
msrini-MSFT 9,291 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2023-09-04T16:32:19.26+00:00

The encoding is either DER or Base64; that's the important part. The file extension of the cert isn't important. If it's Base64 encoded you can simply rename a .CER certificate to .PEM and it will work.

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How to SSH to a virtual machine on Mac OS

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