how to copy a file to another file in separate directories?

So I have created to vm's with the ubuntu 16.04 version. I'm trying to copy my public key into the authorized_keys file, how I have done this is with the command cp id_rsa.pub home/vagrant/.ssh/ I done the command from the home/deploy/.ssh/ directory but I get the following error: cp: cannot create regular file 'home/vagrant/.ssh/': No such file or directory. Can anyone tell me why I'm getting this error.

Thank you for the help in advance.

Solution 1:

The command fails because you need a forward slash at the start of the path, like this:

cp id_rsa.pub /home/vagrant/.ssh/

In order to actually use the key, you can add the key to authorized_keys with this command:

cat id_rsa.pub >> /home/vagrant/.ssh/authorized_keys