How To Copy An SSH Key To Another Linux Machine
Copy your public SSH key to a remote machine for easier access

March 30, 2020 • 1 min read

Copy SSH

Copying your SSH key is a simple and great way to allow for safe ssh communication between your devices.

To create an SSH key, you use the ssh-keygen command. It will be saved at the default /.ssh location.

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "Comment here"

The ssh-copy-id is the simplest way to perform copy of your public SSH key.

ssh-copy-id user@hostname -p <port>

You can specify the password in the command if you use sshpass, which you need to install.

sshpass -p server_password ssh-copy-id user@IP -p port_number

This is a basic command that can be run without installing any third-party applications.

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh <user>@<hostname> 'umask 0077; mkdir -p .ssh; cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys && echo "Key copied"'