Reputation: 56699

How do I access my SSH public key?

I've just generated my RSA key pair, and I wanted to add that key to GitHub.

I tried cd id_rsa.pub and id_rsa.pub, but no luck. How can I access my SSH public key?

Upvotes: 946

Answers (24)

DD_

Reputation: 7388

Copy the key to your clipboard and paste it in your preferred location.

$ pbcopy < ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
# Copies the contents of the id_rsa.pub file to your clipboard

Warning: it's important to copy the key exactly without adding newlines or whitespace. Thankfully the pbcopy command makes it easy to perform this setup perfectly.

check: Generating SSH Keys.

Upvotes: 303

Asadullo Akramov

Reputation: 351

It is very simple. After you generated ssh key on your computer, you can access your public ssh key by following command

 cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

You should see output similar to the following:

ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQCyVGaw1PuEl98f4/7Kq3O9ZIvDw2OFOSXAFVqilSFNkHlefm1iMtPeqsIBp2t9cbGUf55xNDULz/bD/4BCV43yZ5lh0cUYuXALg9NI29ui7PEGReXjSpNwUD6ceN/78YOK41KAcecq+SS0bJ4b4amKZIJG3JWmDKljtv1dmSBCrTmEAQaOorxqGGBYmZS7NQumRe4lav5r6wOs8OACMANE1ejkeZsGFzJFNqvr5DuHdDL5FAudW23me3BDmrM9ifUzzjl1Jwku3bnRaCcjaxH8oTumt1a00mWci/1qUlaVFft085yvVq7KZbF2OPPbl+erDW91+EZ2FgEi+v1/CSJ5 your_username@hostname

Also note that the public key begins with ssh-rsa and ends with your_username@hostname.

Upvotes: 13

Matin Onegh

Reputation: 81

id_rsa.pub is not a directory so you can not use cd to open it.

instead you can use the command cd ~/.ssh to access the folder containing your keys, then use cat id_rsa.pub, nano id_rsa.pub or gedit id_rsa.pub to access the key file.

Upvotes: 3

manero

Reputation: 151

ssh-add is used to show the public key.

man ssh-add

-L  Lists public key parameters of all identities currently repre‐
    sented by the agent.

On my Linux system I copy it using xclip

ssh-add -L | xclip

Upvotes: 0

JOduMonT

Reputation: 31

Just to give a new perspective to that question, if you use github, you could find your public key at: https://github.com/${USERNAME}.keys

Upvotes: 3

Tellisense

Reputation: 2014

Mac, Ubuntu, Linux compatible machines, use this command to print public key, then copy it:

$ cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Upvotes: 31

Kontrollfreak

Reputation: 1830

If you only have your private key available, you can generate the public key from it:

ssh-keygen -y

ssh-keygen -y -f path/to/private_key

Upvotes: 10

sawreals

Reputation: 338

On Mac/unix and Windows:

ssh-keygen then follow the prompts. It will ask you for a name to the file (say you call it pubkey, for example). Right away, you should have your key fingerprint and your key's randomart image visible to you.

Then just use your favourite text editor and enter command vim pubkey.pub and it (your ssh-rsa key) should be there.

Replace vim with emacs or whatever other editor you have/prefer.

Upvotes: 1

J.W

Reputation: 1205

I use Git Bash for my Windows.

$ eval $(ssh-agent -s) //activates the connection

some output

$ ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa //adds the identity

some other output

$ clip < ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub //THIS IS THE IMPORTANT ONE. This adds your key to your clipboard. Go back to GitHub and just paste it in, and voilá! You should be good to go.

Upvotes: 2

Shabeer K

Reputation: 1617

In UBUNTU +18.04

         ssh-keygen -o -t rsa -b 4096 -C "[email protected]"

And After that Just Copy And Paste

         cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

         cat ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub

Upvotes: 7

Aviv

Reputation: 14467

On terminal cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

explanation

cat is a standard Unix utility that reads files and prints output
~ Is your Home User path
/.ssh - your hidden directory contains all your ssh certificates
id_rsa.pub OR id_dsa.pub are RSA public keys, (the private key located on the client machine). the primary key for example can be used to enable cloning project from remote repository securely to your client end point.

Upvotes: 16

Jghayes525

Reputation: 123

If you're using windows, the command is:

type %userprofile%\.ssh\id_rsa.pub

it should print the key (if you have one). You should copy the entire result. If none is present, then do:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "[email protected]" -b 4096

Upvotes: 12

Prabhat Kasera

Reputation: 1149

The following command will save the SSH key on the clipboard. You only need to paste at the desired location.

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | pbcopy

Upvotes: 9

Waseem Sarwar

Reputation: 2725

It can be found on this path (default path):

/Users/john/.ssh

john is your Mac username.

Upvotes: 6

Riley Taylor

Reputation: 121

If you are using Windows PowerShell, the easiest way is to:

cat ~/.ssh/id_<key-type-here>.pub | clip

That will copy the key to your clipboard for easy pasting.

So, in my instance, I use ed25519 since RSA is now fairly hackable:

cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub | clip

Because I find myself doing this a lot, I created a function and set a simple alias I could remember in my PowerShell profile (learn more about PowerShell profiles here. Just add this to your Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1:

function Copy-SSHKey {
    Get-Content ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub | clip
}

Set_Alias -Name sshkey -Value Copy-SSHKey

Then, in a PowerShell console, run . $profile to load the functions. Then from now on all you will need to do is run sshkey, and then paste the key into wherever you need via the clipboard.

Upvotes: 12

yavorcik

Reputation: 111

Use:

# sudo su
# cd /home/user/.ssh
.ssh# gedit id_rsa.pub

Then copy the entire file without any spaces. Click your icon at the top right of the GitHub page, go to settings, and add ssh.

Paste the copy into the space. It may prompt for your GitHub password. Enter it. Save.

Upvotes: 7

Mev

Reputation: 1625

If you're on Windows use the following, select all, and copy from a Notepad window:

notepad ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

If you're on OS X, use:

pbcopy < ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Upvotes: 39

Mark

Reputation: 788

Here's how I found mine on OS X:

Open a terminal
(You are in the home directory) cd .ssh (a hidden directory)
pbcopy < id_rsa.pub (this copies it to the clipboard)

If that doesn't work, do an ls and see what files are in there with a .pub extension.

Upvotes: 21

sbdv0

Reputation: 79

Open your id_dsa.pub or some_name.pub file with gedit and copy-paste the contents!

Just use:

~/.ssh$ gedit some_name.pub

Upvotes: 7

Jun

Reputation: 3044

On a Mac, you can do this to copy it to your clipboard (like cmd + c shortcut)
cat ~/Desktop/ded.html | pbcopy
pbcopy < ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

and to paste pbpaste > ~Documents/id_rsa.txt

or, use cmd + v shorcut to paste it somewhere else.

~/.ssh is the same path as /Users/macbook-username/.ssh
You can use Print work directory: pwd command on terminal to get the path to your current directory.

Upvotes: 2