Copy ssh Public key to Server in one line

Submitted by David Grant on Wed, 2007-05-23 17:06

Update (2011/02/06): you don't really need any of the commands below, you can just use the ssh-copy-id program that comes with ssh.

Here it is:

cat ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub | ssh <a href="mailto:user@hostname">user@hostname</a> "cat - >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"

Apparently some people don't like this one that much. :-)

Here's an alternative:

ssh <a href="mailto:user@hostname">user@hostname</a> "echo `cat ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub` >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"

It doesn't require the first cat or the pipe.

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Comments

gregf (not verified)

Wed, 2007-05-23 19:49

Nice one liner, if your using gentoo theres also a bash script that comes with ssh. /usr/bin/ssh-copy-id just in case you were unaware.

David Grant

Wed, 2007-05-23 21:48

No I wasn't aware of that. Thanks. My main box is Gentoo. The particular one I was using was Ubuntu Server.

bonsaikitten (not verified)

Thu, 2007-05-24 01:10

There's always scp, so no need to do whacky pipes.

scp ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub <a href="mailto:user@hostname">user@hostname</a>:~/.ssh/authorized_keys

David Grant

Thu, 2007-05-24 10:54

patrick, that only works if you don't mind wiping the authorized_keys file? I need to append a key while keeping the others.

Ciaran McCreesh (not verified)

Thu, 2007-05-24 04:12

Don't abuse the cat like that!

Russell (not verified)

Thu, 2008-12-04 20:26

Or if you want it to handle the directory and file maybe being there and maybe not (as well as still appending to existing ones):

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh user@hostname "mkdir -p ~/.ssh && touch ~/.ssh/authorized_keys && cat - >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys && chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys && chmod 700 ~/.ssh"

bukmacher (not verified)

Thu, 2009-11-12 09:55

thanks for key, bookmarked

Jonathan (not verified)

Wed, 2009-12-09 03:10

This is the method I usually use:
ssh-copy-id user@remote.server.com

David Grant

Wed, 2009-12-09 08:42

OMG, that's so awesome. Thanks.

jayp (not verified)

Thu, 2010-12-30 11:52

Just what I was looking for. It works just as you describe. The chmod permissions commands are a nice add.

Anthony Oliver (not verified)

Wed, 2011-04-20 09:33

Awesome tip. Was having issues with ssh-copy-id, this worked first time.

Varazir (not verified)

Sun, 2011-10-09 02:07

Thanks for the command lines :)

You can't connect to non standard port with ssh-copy-id :(

Anonymous (not verified)

Thu, 2012-02-16 00:04

ssh-copy-id -i /path/to/id_foobar.pub "-p 2222 user@server"

Colin (not verified)

Thu, 2014-06-26 00:31

If you are wanting to add your ssh key to a host to speed up logging into it then you should really have an entry in your ~/.ssh/config file:

Host machine1
 Port 2222
 User user1

This also works with sftp and scp, so makes your life much simpler.

Amjad Mohamed (not verified)

Sat, 2012-02-25 02:20

Great tip. Thank You.

Can anyone shed some light on how the command works?

Anonymous (not verified)

Thu, 2013-03-21 14:17

Thanks!

One liner is really handy as ssh-copy-id is not available mac!

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