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Copy ssh keys to user@host to enable password-less ssh logins.

Terminal - Copy ssh keys to user@host to enable password-less ssh logins.
$ssh-copy-id user@host
2009-02-07 04:58:11
User: senthil
234
Up
Down
Copy ssh keys to user@host to enable password-less ssh logins.

To generate the keys use the command ssh-keygen

Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Alternatives

There are 5 alternatives - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives
ssh-copy-id username@hostname
2009-02-16 12:11:26
User: flart
Functions: ssh
45
Up
Down
Copy your SSH public key on a remote machine for passwordless login - the easy way
Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
ssh-copy-id user@host
2009-08-07 16:36:19
User: matthewbauer
Functions: ssh
4
Up
Down
Copy ssh keys to user@host to enable password-less ssh logins.

Same as original just no $ at start

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
ssh-keygen ptaduri@c3pusas1
2011-05-18 13:30:58
User: ptaduri
Functions: ssh ssh-keygen
0
Up
Down
Copy ssh keys to user@host to enable password-less ssh logins.
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
ssh-copy-id -i .ssh/id_rsa.pub username:password@remotehost.com
2011-02-01 18:25:11
User: harleywastaken
Functions: ssh
-1
Up
Down
copy ssh id to remote host
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
$ssh-copy-id ptaduri@c3pusas1
2011-05-18 13:27:06
User: ptaduri
-1
Up
Down
Copy your SSH public key on a remote machine for passwordless login - the easy way
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Know a better way?

If you can do better, submit your command here.

What others think

If you need change default port ssh, you can use:

ssh-copy-id 'user@host -p2233'

Comment by irraz 156 weeks and 1 day ago

I think this isn't normally found outside Ubuntu or Debian systems.

Comment by mlambie 155 weeks and 3 days ago

Alternativly you can use ?cat ~/.ssh/*.pub | ssh user@remote-system 'umask 077; cat >>.ssh/authorized_keys'? on such systems.

Comment by DASKAjA 155 weeks and 3 days ago

... without the question marks (?) of course.

Comment by DASKAjA 155 weeks and 3 days ago

Beware : without arguments it copies your identity.pub file, which is by default a RSA1 pub key (obsolete), unless you have already executed ssh-agent, added your keys, so that ssh-add -L returns something.

Comment by jmcoursi 155 weeks ago

Works on RedHat-like systems

Comment by jmcoursi 155 weeks ago

Also works on Gentoo, it's contained in openssh package.

Comment by xupeng 153 weeks and 5 days ago

doesn't work across all unix OS. Or is there some installation needed?

Comment by rommelsharma 152 weeks and 6 days ago
cat ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub | ssh user@remotehost 'cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
Comment by juddmaltin 150 weeks and 3 days ago

ssh-copy-id is just a script. If you don't have it you can google it easily ehough. Using the above cat is easier though. OS X doesn't bundle ssh-copy-id so I always use the cat version.

Comment by qubyte 149 weeks and 2 days ago

This does not work on CentOS 5.3:

ssh-add -L

The agent has no identities.

So, this tip requires at least some readme on setting up said ssh-copy-id

Quick reading of man ssh-agent did not result in much enlightenment for me.

On the other hand the

cat ~/.ssh/*.pub | ssh user@remote-system 'umask 077; cat >>.ssh/authorized_keys'

is easy to understand and certainly works....

Comment by vleolml 143 weeks and 3 days ago

vleolml, ssh-copy-id does exist on both Ubuntu 8.x and CentOS 5.x.

Comment by bassu 136 weeks and 5 days ago

As always, read the man page carefully before using this command. It does a bit more than just copying your public key. It also modifies the permissions of ~ and ~/.ssh, which may not be what you want if for example the recipient of your key is user postgres on the remote box.

Comment by lorenzocabrini 70 weeks and 5 days ago

For OSX using Homebrew: there is a Formula for this: http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/

Comment by unixmonkey24450 25 weeks and 6 days ago

Your point of view

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