Howto create a Steemit login from the owner key

Before you could login with your owner key and do this via the web interface on Steemit, but this summer things changed and it's no longer possible to login using the owner key. The error message you now will see is: "This login gives owner or active permissions and should not be used here. Please provide a posting only login."

While mining you need to create multiple accounts to ensure that you still mine after a miner find a PoW and goes into the witness queue. So the recommendation in the guides is to add a couple of extra accounts, after checking that they are not yet taken. Then after you find a PoW the account gets created and you can supposedly use the owner key to login. This worked well up until the change this summer.

Because you no longer can login view the owner key, you know need to create a new posting key to perform the login. As I struggled a bit with this, I wrote up this small howto, and hopes someone might find it via search and hopefully can save some time.

Since I assume you are mining, I'm sure you already have steemd installed and compiled. The only other thing you need now is your owner key, assuming it's 5JZ7t8RqAEVwLNKQBJYuTGEHUXammdjhepze9DtnUwZfWVzGBkV

$ cli_wallet
Starting a new wallet
Please use the set_password method to initialize a new wallet before continuing
new >>> set_password "mysecretppw"
set_password "mysecretpassword"
null
locked >>> unlock "mysecretpw"
unlock "YhcV4!Nz8C"
null
unlocked >>> import_key 5JZ7t8RqAEVwLNKQBJYuTGEHUXammdjhepze9DtnUwZfWVzGBkV
import_key 5JZ7t8RqAEVwLNKQBJYuTGEHUXammdjhepze9DtnUwZfWVzGBkV
1275614ms th_a       wallet.cpp:412                save_wallet_file     ] saving wallet to file wallet.json
true
unlocked >>> 

So now I have loaded my account with the private key. To check out the public keys on the account you can use the command get_account_info

new >>> get_account grmm2
{
  "id": "2.2.68461",
  "name": "grmm2",
  "owner": {
    "weight_threshold": 1,
    "account_auths": [],
    "key_auths": [[
        "STM6kUJhUVHdmtSktSC99xYAxQrnBDmBiGravKBVX6tD2tEpspGSm",
        1
      ]
    ]
  },
  "active": {
    "weight_threshold": 1,
    "account_auths": [],
    "key_auths": [[
        "STM6kUJhUVHdmtSktSC99xYAxQrnBDmBiGravKBVX6tD2tEpspGSm",
        1
      ]
    ]
  },
  "posting": {
    "weight_threshold": 1,
    "account_auths": [],
    "key_auths": [[
        "STM6kUJhUVHdmtSktSC99xYAxQrnBDmBiGravKBVX6tD2tEpspGSm",
        1
      ]
    ]
  },
  "memo_key": "STM6kUJhUVHdmtSktSC99xYAxQrnBDmBiGravKBVX6tD2tEpspGSm",
...

Looks like they are all set to the public key of my private key.

Next step is to change the posting key so that I can login to the account.

To do this we first need to use the suggest_brain_key helper command to generate a combination, then add this to the active key and remove the old key. This is done using the command update_account_auth_key

Here are the commands:

unlocked >>> suggest_brain_key 
suggest_brain_key 
{
  "brain_priv_key": "NIDOR GAGEE REREEL WHILST ERMELIN ALLOQUY PENTODE CUSTARD BLASTY CRINAL BOGUM WIGGISH OVERHOT JAKO MYRRHIC AIWAN",
  "wif_priv_key": "5KUGNxp1UQN3rB1A6ShFKw4uwLtrdTPGsCaSxdEJj2nCHBkKvNE",
  "pub_key": "STM8h8q6cRNaRnwc5qgkPt436yWjZpcEFfgWr9Cp42mz8gQ5xj1HM"
}
unlocked >>> update_account_auth_key grmm2 posting STM8h8q6cRNaRnwc5qgkPt436yWjZpcEFfgWr9Cp42mz8gQ5xj1HM 1 true
....

Then you need to remove the old one, or you will not be able to log in

unlocked >>> update_account_auth_key grmm2 posting STM6kUJhUVHdmtSktSC99xYAxQrnBDmBiGravKBVX6tD2tEpspGSm 0 true
...

Thats it. Now we just need to wait a minute and then it's possible to login with the new private posting key (5KUGNxp1UQN3rB1A6ShFKw4uwLtrdTPGsCaSxdEJj2nCHBkKvNE) on steemit.com.

Good luck with your mining!