title: Enter file in which to save the key
body: <p>When generating an SSH key with OpenBSD, we are asked to enter a file in which to save the key.</p>
  
  <pre><code>ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "your_email@example.com"
  Generating public/private rsa key pair.
  Enter file in which to save the key (/c/Users/TheUser/.ssh/id_rsa):
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>From reading the <a href="http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi/OpenBSD-current/man1/ssh-keygen.1" rel="noreferrer">OpenBSD manual pages</a>, I understand that the file we enter will store the <em>private</em> key and another file with a <code>.pub</code> extension will store the <em>public</em> key.</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Normally this program generates the key and asks for a file in which to store the private key. The public key is stored in a file with the same name but “.pub” appended. </p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>The <a href="https://help.github.com/articles/generating-ssh-keys/" rel="noreferrer">GitHub pages on Generating SSH Keys</a> says that we should just press enter to continue here. My sense is that means we'll just use a default file, which I assume is in the parentheses, for example: <code>(/c/Users/TheUser/.ssh/id_rsa)</code>.</p>
  
  <p>Is what I wrote above correct? Also, what are the implications of actually entering a file in which to save the key rather than just pressing enter as GitHub suggests? While I'm pretty sure that <code>id_rsa</code> is just the default, and that it can be anything, I would like to know the conventions.</p>