Can we use same SSH key on multiple computers?

Can we use same SSH key on multiple computers?

4 Answers. The same SSH key should be able to be used from multiple clients. I have different SSH keys for different networks and they’re actually stored on an encrypted USB drive that I use from several different computers without a problem.

How do I generate the same SSH key?

1. Create a Key Pair on Your Computer

1. Open a terminal window. At the shell prompt, type the following command: ssh-keygen -t rsa.
2. The ssh-keygen program will prompt you for the location of the key file.
3. Note the location to which your public and private key were saved; they will be required in a subsequent step.

Should I use the same SSH key for everything?

As far as security is concerned, you don’t compromise your key in any way by using it to log in on a machine (as you would by using a password), so having separate keys for separate destinations doesn’t make you any more safe from an authentication/security perspective.

How do I find my ssh public key?

Checking for existing SSH keys

1. Open Terminal .
2. Enter ls -al ~/.ssh to see if existing SSH keys are present: $ ls -al ~/.ssh # Lists the files in your .ssh directory, if they exist.
3. Check the directory listing to see if you already have a public SSH key.

Where are private ssh keys stored?

By default, the private key is stored in ~/. ssh/id_rsa and the public key is stored in ~/. ssh/id_rsa.

How do I get my SSH private key?

To generate an SSH key with PuTTYgen, follow these steps:

1. Open the PuTTYgen program.
2. For Type of key to generate, select SSH-2 RSA.
3. Click the Generate button.
4. Move your mouse in the area below the progress bar.
5. Type a passphrase in the Key passphrase field.
6. Click the Save private key button to save the private key.

How do I copy my SSH public key?

Steps to copy SSH public key to remote server using ssh-copy-id:

1. Launch terminal.
2. Locate your public SSH key. $ ls ~/.ssh/id* /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa /home/user/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
3. Add your SSH public key to remote server user’s authorized_keys file using ssh-copy-id command.

Are ssh keys per user?

You only need one key as the key belongs to your user. There is no need (and no improvement in security) by having one key per host. As long as your private key is kept private you can go with this single key and use it to authenticate yourself against multiple hosts.

How do I generate a SSH key pair?

You can create an SSH key pair by running ssh-keygen at the terminal. Launch your favourite terminal application. Run ssh-keygen command. $ ssh-keygen Generating public/private rsa key pair. ssh-keygen will generate a 2048 bit rsa key pair if no option is specified.

How to use the same SSH key on two different machines?

I’ve got a Github repo I want to access from two different Linux machines. For the first machine, I followed Github’s instructions for generating SSH keys, and added the resulting public key to Github. This client works fine. For the second client, I copied the /home/ {user}/.ssh/id_rsa file from the first client.

What do I need to know about SSH keys?

The -i option specifies the key to use and works the same with all of the SSH client utilities, including the ssh, ssh-copy-id, and scp commands: This option can be given muliple times to limit which keys to try, if you know it is one of a handful of keys, but I usually only need to specify the exact key.

How do I convert my SSH key to a new one?

If you don’t want to do that, then you can convert the existing private key using ssh-keygen -i and ssh-keygen -e to convert your private key to the appropriate format. This should be done on the newer machine, the one that generated the key. The manual page documents the options and formats supported.