[NTLUG:Discuss] ssh key generation

[brian@pongonova.net]

Unless you're trying to protect national security secrets, 8192 bits
is overkill.  2048 bits is more than sufficient, and probably won't be
broken in your lifetime...

But yes, expect several hours of processing on your 8K-bit key.

  --Brian

On Thu, Jun 23, 2005 at 06:00:54PM -0500, Ralph Green, Jr. wrote:
> Howdy,
>   I am generating some new public/private key
> pairs to use for communicating to a new server.
> I have not done this in a while and I am a
> little concerned about how long it is taking.
> The machine is a P2/366 running SuSE 9.3.  I
> issued the command:
>   ssh-keygen -b 8192 -t dsa
>  It has been running for two and a half hours
> so far.  Is it conceivable that it is running
> ok?  I don't seem to be swapping even though
> the system only has 192 meg of ram.