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Ryan
Asked: 2012-11-29 21:13:19 +0800 CST

How do I validate an RSA SSH public key file (id_rsa.pub)?

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Is there a command I can use to verify the public key (id_rsa.pub), just the format only.

Sometimes I have added a new linebreak, sometimes the file missed the ssh-rsa prefix, so is there a command to validate with?

ssh

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You can use ssh-keygen for this. Despite its name it can do many more things than generating keys:

    dennis@lightning:~$ ssh-keygen -l -f .ssh/id_rsa.pub 
2048 68:df:b2:22:d8:43:5d:36:75:c1:d8:59:c0:8c:22:e8  Dennis Kaarsemaker (RSA)
dennis@lightning:~$ ssh-keygen -l -f foo.txt
foo.txt is not a public key file.
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