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Generating an SSH key with Dev Desktop

Important

End of Support notice! Acquia has stopped support for Dev Desktop on June 30, 2021. Acquia recommends that you transition to Acquia Cloud IDE for a managed development environment on Cloud Platform. For more information, see Migrating from Dev Desktop to Cloud IDE.

Acquia also provides limited integration with open source alternatives to Cloud IDE for local development. For more information, see Local development solutions.

To synchronize a local website with Cloud Platform, you need to register an SSH key in your Acquia user profile. If you don’t already have one, you can generate a public/private key pair using Acquia Dev Desktop.

Generate a new key

To generate an SSH key pair in Acquia Dev Desktop:

  1. On the Acquia Dev Desktop menu, click Preferences.

  2. On the General tab, click Generate.

    The SSH key pair dialog box appears with your new public key.

  3. Click Copy public key to clipboard. You can use the copied public key to register it with Cloud Platform.

    Note

    Installing a new SSH key that is not yet provisioned in your Cloud account will cause Acquia Dev Desktop to display the following error message: SSH key not yet paired with Cloud Platform. Allow a few minutes for provisioning to occur.

  4. Use the Key password field to enter an optional password for your key.

    Note

    Entering a key password makes your SSH key more secure by requiring you to use the key password whenever you use the key. If you do not associate a password with your key, someone who obtains your key could use it to access certain resources, including your Cloud Platform websites. Additionally, you may need a password for your key for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance.

  5. Click Save key pair, and in the dialog box that appears, determine the location and file name of the key pair.

  6. Click Save to save the key pair file.

  7. Click Close to close the SSH key pair dialog box.

You now have an SSH key pair that you can use with other services, including Cloud Platform.

For information about adding the key that you created to Cloud Platform, see Adding a public key to an Acquia profile. If you copied the key to your clipboard in step 3, you can skip step 5 in the Cloud Platform-key adding process.

Replacing old keys

If you previously had SSH keys and used the preceding process to create new keys, you may need to refresh your Cloud Platform websites in Acquia Dev Desktop.

To refresh your websites:

  1. If the Settings dialog box is still being displayed, click Cancel.

  2. In the bottom left corner, click More.

  3. In the list, click Refresh Acquia Cloud sites.

After the refresh process successfully completes, your local environments should be able to synchronize with your Cloud Platform websites.

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