Generate a ssh key with R

April 4, 2020
`keygen` `ssh` `R` `continuous integration` `GitHub pages`

I now frequently use GitHub actions to deploy websites on gh-pages. One way to do so requires to use a ssh key (the full procedure is well explained, inter alia, in the README of peaceiris/actions-gh-pages). As I am used to work with the Terminal, when I need such a key, I use the following command line:

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$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "$(git config user.email)" -f gh-pages -N ""

which generates two files:

gh-pages.pub
gh-pages that contains the private one.

For some reasons, I was interested in replicating this behavior with . Fortunately, the package openssl includes rsa_keygen() and write_pem() that makes this super easy:

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library(openssl)
# 1. generate the pair of keys
key <- rsa_keygen(4096)
# 2. write the public key with my email in ""gh-pages.pub"
cat(paste(key$pubkey$ssh, "kcazelle@uoguelph.ca") , file = "gh-pages.pub")
# 3. write the private key
cat(write_pem(key), file = "gh-pages")

So now, I can gather this step in a handy function that I can append to .Rprofile!

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gen_key <- function(bits = 4096, email = "kcazelle@uoguelph.ca", file = "gh-pages") {
  key <- openssl::rsa_keygen(bits)
  cat(paste(key$pubkey$ssh, email), file = paste0(file, ".pub"))
  cat(openssl::write_pem(key), file = "gh-pages")
  key
}

That’s all folks 🎉!

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Generate a ssh key with R

April 4, 2020
`keygen` `ssh` `R` `continuous integration` `GitHub pages`

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Generate a ssh key with R

April 4, 2020 keygen ssh R continuous integration GitHub pages

April 4, 2020
`keygen` `ssh` `R` `continuous integration` `GitHub pages`