Convert pem key to ssh-rsa format

Question

No need to compile stuff. You can do the same with ssh-keygen:

ssh-keygen -f pub1key.pub -i

will read the public key in openssl format from pub1key.pub and output it in OpenSSH format.

Note: In some cases you will need to specify the input format:

ssh-keygen -f pub1key.pub -i -mPKCS8

From the ssh-keygen docs (From man ssh-keygen):

-m key_format Specify a key format for the -i (import) or -e (export) conversion options. The supported key formats are: “RFC4716” (RFC 4716/SSH2 public or private key), “PKCS8” (PEM PKCS8 public key) or “PEM” (PEM public key). The default conversion format is “RFC4716”.

No need for scripts or other 'tricks': openssl and ssh-keygen are enough. I'm assuming no password for the keys (which is bad).

Generate an RSA pair

All the following methods give an RSA key pair in the same format

1. With openssl (man genrsa)

   openssl genrsa -out dummy-genrsa.pem 2048
   

   In OpenSSL v1.0.1 genrsa is superseded by genpkey so this is the new way to do it (man genpkey):

   openssl genpkey -algorithm RSA -out dummy-genpkey.pem -pkeyopt rsa_keygen_bits:2048
   

2. With ssh-keygen

   ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048 -f dummy-ssh-keygen.pem -N '' -C "Test Key"
   

Converting DER to PEM

If you have an RSA key pair in DER format, you may want to convert it to PEM to allow the format conversion below:

Generation:

openssl genpkey -algorithm RSA -out genpkey-dummy.cer -outform DER -pkeyopt rsa_keygen_bits:2048

Conversion:

openssl rsa -inform DER -outform PEM -in genpkey-dummy.cer -out dummy-der2pem.pem

Extract the public key from the PEM formatted RSA pair

2. in PEM format:

   openssl rsa -in dummy-xxx.pem -pubout
   

3. in OpenSSH v2 format see:

   ssh-keygen -y -f dummy-xxx.pem
   

Notes

OS and software version:

[user@test1 ~]# cat /etc/redhat-release ; uname -a ; openssl version
CentOS release 6.5 (Final)
Linux test1.example.local 2.6.32-431.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Fri Nov 22 03:15:09 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
OpenSSL 1.0.1e-fips 11 Feb 2013

References:

• Sysmic.org Convert keys betweens GnuPG, OpenSsh and OpenSSL

To answer my own question, after posting on openssl mailing list got this:

Here is C code to convert from an OpenSSL public key to an OpenSSH public key. You can grab the code from this link and compile it yourself:

static unsigned char pSshHeader[11] = { 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x07, 0x73, 0x73, 0x68, 0x2D, 0x72, 0x73, 0x61};

static int SshEncodeBuffer(unsigned char *pEncoding, int bufferLen, unsigned char* pBuffer)
{
   int adjustedLen = bufferLen, index;
   if (*pBuffer & 0x80)
   {
      adjustedLen++;
      pEncoding[4] = 0;
      index = 5;
   }
   else
   {
      index = 4;
   }
   pEncoding[0] = (unsigned char) (adjustedLen >> 24);
   pEncoding[1] = (unsigned char) (adjustedLen >> 16);
   pEncoding[2] = (unsigned char) (adjustedLen >>  8);
   pEncoding[3] = (unsigned char) (adjustedLen      );
   memcpy(&pEncoding[index], pBuffer, bufferLen);
   return index + bufferLen;
}

int main(int argc, char**  argv)
{
   int iRet = 0;
   int nLen = 0, eLen = 0;
   int encodingLength = 0;
   int index = 0;
   unsigned char *nBytes = NULL, *eBytes = NULL;
   unsigned char* pEncoding = NULL;
   FILE* pFile = NULL;
   EVP_PKEY *pPubKey = NULL;
   RSA* pRsa = NULL;
   BIO *bio, *b64;

   ERR_load_crypto_strings(); 
   OpenSSL_add_all_algorithms();

   if (argc != 3)
   {
      printf("usage: %s public_key_file_name ssh_key_description\n", argv[0]);
      iRet = 1;
      goto error;
   }

   pFile = fopen(argv[1], "rt");
   if (!pFile)
   {
      printf("Failed to open the given file\n");
      iRet = 2;
      goto error;
   }

   pPubKey = PEM_read_PUBKEY(pFile, NULL, NULL, NULL);
   if (!pPubKey)
   {
      printf("Unable to decode public key from the given file: %s\n", ERR_error_string(ERR_get_error(), NULL));
      iRet = 3;
      goto error;
   }

   if (EVP_PKEY_type(pPubKey->type) != EVP_PKEY_RSA)
   {
      printf("Only RSA public keys are currently supported\n");
      iRet = 4;
      goto error;
   }

   pRsa = EVP_PKEY_get1_RSA(pPubKey);
   if (!pRsa)
   {
      printf("Failed to get RSA public key : %s\n", ERR_error_string(ERR_get_error(), NULL));
      iRet = 5;
      goto error;
   }

   // reading the modulus
   nLen = BN_num_bytes(pRsa->n);
   nBytes = (unsigned char*) malloc(nLen);
   BN_bn2bin(pRsa->n, nBytes);

   // reading the public exponent
   eLen = BN_num_bytes(pRsa->e);
   eBytes = (unsigned char*) malloc(eLen);
   BN_bn2bin(pRsa->e, eBytes);

   encodingLength = 11 + 4 + eLen + 4 + nLen;
   // correct depending on the MSB of e and N
   if (eBytes[0] & 0x80)
      encodingLength++;
   if (nBytes[0] & 0x80)
      encodingLength++;

   pEncoding = (unsigned char*) malloc(encodingLength);
   memcpy(pEncoding, pSshHeader, 11);

   index = SshEncodeBuffer(&pEncoding[11], eLen, eBytes);
   index = SshEncodeBuffer(&pEncoding[11 + index], nLen, nBytes);

   b64 = BIO_new(BIO_f_base64());
   BIO_set_flags(b64, BIO_FLAGS_BASE64_NO_NL);
   bio = BIO_new_fp(stdout, BIO_NOCLOSE);
   BIO_printf(bio, "ssh-rsa ");
   bio = BIO_push(b64, bio);
   BIO_write(bio, pEncoding, encodingLength);
   BIO_flush(bio);
   bio = BIO_pop(b64);
   BIO_printf(bio, " %s\n", argv[2]);
   BIO_flush(bio);
   BIO_free_all(bio);
   BIO_free(b64);

error:
   if (pFile)
      fclose(pFile);
   if (pRsa)
      RSA_free(pRsa);
   if (pPubKey)
      EVP_PKEY_free(pPubKey);
   if (nBytes)
      free(nBytes);
   if (eBytes)
      free(eBytes);
   if (pEncoding)
      free(pEncoding);

   EVP_cleanup();
   ERR_free_strings();
   return iRet;
}

ssh-keygen -i -m PKCS8 -f public-key.pem

ssh-keygen -f private.pem -y > public.pub

The following script would obtain the ci.jenkins-ci.org public key certificate in base64-encoded DER format and convert it to an OpenSSH public key file. This code assumes that a 2048-bit RSA key is used and draws a lot from this Ian Boyd's answer. I've explained a bit more how it works in comments to this article in Jenkins wiki.

echo -n "ssh-rsa " > jenkins.pub
curl -sfI https://ci.jenkins-ci.org/ | grep -i X-Instance-Identity | tr -d \\r | cut -d\  -f2 | base64 -d | dd bs=1 skip=32 count=257 status=none | xxd -p -c257 | sed s/^/00000007\ 7373682d727361\ 00000003\ 010001\ 00000101\ / | xxd -p -r | base64 -w0 >> jenkins.pub
echo >> jenkins.pub