#SSH COPY KEY FILE SOFTWARE#

Untrusted or heavily shared bastion host. Or use the ProxyJump command option where you may need to connect to another system through an Instead, you can use SSH Agent to remember a key passphrase for the duration of a login session.Ĭonsider using SSH Agent Forwarding to connect from trusted system to trusted system, However, using a key without a passphrase can be poor security practice. Key pairs that do not have passphrases, can help with scripted automation as they can access remote systems instantly and you avoid having to enter your passphrase each time you connect. When generating key pairs, you can either configure them to have a password or not. For security, avoid copying your private key to multiple locations. You can store your private key safely on a single client that you use to access the servers. Then to connect to the server, you provide your matching private key. Once you have a key pair, you copy the public key to any server that you want to connect to.

#SSH COPY KEY FILE SOFTWARE#

Refer to your client software documentation if you are unsure about key format. For example, keys generated using the PuTTY ssh client software are not directly compatible with OpenSSH and may need to be converted before use. Not all key pairs are compatible with OpenSSH and you may need to convert keys as required.

Generally, you only generate an SSH key pair once and only change the key pair if it may have been compromised. You can either use an existing key pair or generate a new one. To use key authentication, you must first have a key pair: a public key and a corresponding private key.

Ssh copy key file