How to add RSA key to authorized_keys file?

Solution 1:

Make sure when executing Michael Krelin's solution you do the following

cat <your_public_key_file> >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Note that without the double >> the existing contents of authorized_keys will be over-written (nuked!) and that may not be desirable.

Solution 2:

mkdir -p ~/.ssh/

To overwrite authorized_keys

cat your_key > ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

To append to the end of authorized_keys

cat your_key >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Solution 3:

There is already a command in the ssh suite to do this automatically for you. I.e log into a remote host and add the public key to that computers authorized_keys file.

ssh-copy-id -i /path/to/key/file [email protected]

If the key you are installing is ~/.ssh/id_rsa then you can even drop the -i flag completely.

Much better than manually doing it!