Accessing OpenMDAO on Launchpad – SSH Keys

The source repository for OpenMDAO is read-accessible to the public, so making a branch from it does not typically require that you have a Launchpad account. However, if you are behind a proxy, you may need to not only have a Launchpad account but also register your public SSH key with your Launchpad account before you can read or write to the repository. If you require write access to the OpenMDAO project on Launchpad, either to push changes directly to the trunk or to push up personal branches for merge approval, you will need to have a Launchpad account and to register your public SSH key with that account, regardless of whether you are behind a proxy or not. The following section describes how to register your SSH key with Launchpad.

These instructions assume that you already have a Launchpad account. If you do not, please go to https://launchpad.net and register for an account. Go ahead and log in to your Launchpad account, since you will need to be logged in to register your key.

Linux or Mac OS X Users

Please follow these instructions for the SSH key creation/registration process if you use Linux or Mac OS X.

Creating Your Key on Linux

1. First, check to see if you already have an SSH key. Look for a file called ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub. If the file is there, skip to the next section and learn how to register your key with Launchpad.
2. You should be in your home directory on your Linux machine. At the prompt, type: ssh-keygen -t rsa.
3. When prompted, press Enter to accept the default file name for your key.
4. Press Enter when prompted for a password and then press it again to confirm that you are NOT entering a password. Your key pair is stored in ~/.ssh/ as id_rsa.pub (public key) and id_rsa (private key).

Note

In the unusual event that the ssh-keygen command fails, you may need to install OpenSSH. To do this requires that you have admin privileges. On Ubuntu, you can install OpenSSH by opening your terminal and typing: sudo apt-get install openssh-client.

Registering the Key with Launchpad

You need to register and upload the public portion of your SSH key to Launchpad.

1. Open your public key in a text editor and copy its contents to your clipboard. The public key file has the extension .pub; for example: id_rsa.pub
2. You must be logged into Launchpad for this step. Go to your SSH keys page.
3. Paste your public key into the text box and then click the Import Public Key button (below the text box) to continue.

Notifying Launchpad of Your Userid

You need to provide Launchpad with your userid before you can merge from openmdao to your branch or push a branch back to openmdao. In your home directory on your Linux machine, type:

bzr launchpad-login userid

Note

If you do not know your userid, log in to Launchpad and click on your name in the upper right-hand corner. This takes you to an Overview page. In the first column, under User Information, you should see OpenID login. The web address will contain your userid.

If the above command failed, you may be missing an authentication.conf file or have incomplete information in your bazaar.conf file. To check whether you have these files, type the following commands:

1. cd  ~/.bazaar
2. ls
3. If you do not see the authentication.conf file, use a text editor of your choice to create it.
4. In the blank file that you just created, type:

[Launchpad]
host = .launchpad.net
scheme = ssh
user = <launchpad-userid>

5. Save and exit the authentication.conf file.
6. Use your text editor to open the bazaar.conf file. Make sure your Launchpad userid is in the file. If it isn’t, add it at the end of the file, for example: launchpad_userid = john-j-smith.
7. Save any changes and exit the file.

See also

For information on creating a branch, building, and pushing a branch to openmdao on Launchpad, see Working on Your Branch.

Windows Users

If you use Windows, please follow these instructions for SSH key creation and registration.

Creating Your Key on Windows

1. In your user directory (on Vista, for example, C:\Users\<win-username-here>), create a new directory called .ssh. Creating this directory with Explorer will not work because of the leading dot! To create this directory, start a command prompt and navigate (using the cd command) to your user directory and type md .ssh.

2. Assuming PuTTY is installed in C:\Putty, go there and run PuTTYgen. If it isn’t installed, go to this page and download it.

3. Within PuTTYgen, click the Generate button and move your mouse around as instructed. Do not enter a key passphrase.

4. Once the key is generated, go to the Conversions menu and choose Export OpenSSH Key. (DON’T USE the Save Private Key button.) In the save dialog, navigate to the .ssh folder and save the key that you created in Step 1 above. Save the private key as id_rsa (no file extension). PuTTYgen will warn you that you’re making a key without a passphrase. Click YES to let PuTTYgen know that you are sure you want to save this key without a passphrase to protect it.

   Check to make sure your key is not created with a .ppk extension. If it has an extension, use Explorer to navigate to this file and rename it so it has NO extension.

   Keep your Putty Key Generator open for registering with Launchpad.

Registering the Key with Launchpad

1. In your .ssh directory, create an empty file called id_rsa.pub. Keep this file open so you can copy Key information into it.
2. Copy the string from the field titled Public Key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys file: onto your clipboard; then paste it into the newly created id_rsa.pub file. Save this file.
3. Start a browser and navigate to Launchpad.net. Log in to your Launchpad account. Once logged in, you can either edit your user information or go directly to the URL: https://launchpad.net/~lp-userid-goes-here/+editsshkeys.
4. Your clipboard should still contain id_rsa.pub. Paste the contents of id_rsa.pub into the Add an SSH key field. Click Import Public Key and wait for the key to be added.
5. From the Windows command line (assuming you have Bazaar installed and assuming you have a LaunchPad account) you should now be able to do: bzr launchpad-login <your-lp-userid-here>.

Note

If you do not know your userid, in Launchpad click on your name in the upper right-hand corner. This takes you to an Overview page. In the first column, under User Information, you should see OpenID login. The web address will contain your userid.

6. If everything worked correctly as you followed these steps, you should be able to create a branch using bzr branch lp:openmdao without getting any SSH key errors.