How to convert SSH keypairs generated using PuTTYgen (Windows) into key-pairs used by ssh-agent and Keychain (Linux)

Question

I\'ve generated key pairs using PuTTYgen and been logging in using Pageant, so that I have to enter my pass-phrase only once when my system boots.

How do I achieve

Answer 1

I recently had this problem as I was moving from Putty for Linux to Remmina for Linux. So I have a lot of PPK files for Putty in my .putty directory as I've been using it's for 8 years. For this I used a simple for command for bash shell to do all files:

cd ~/.putty
for X in *.ppk; do puttygen $X -L > ~/.ssh/$(echo $X | sed 's,./,,' | sed 's/.ppk//g').pub; puttygen $X -O private-openssh -o ~/.ssh/$(echo $X | sed 's,./,,' | sed 's/.ppk//g').pvk; done;

Very quick and to the point, got the job done for all files that putty had. If it finds a key with a password it will stop and ask for the password for that key first and then continue.