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Steve Bennett
Asked: 2017-02-09 14:02:59 +0800 CST

Test that I have correctly added someone's public key to authorized_keys

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I've been through quite a few rounds of this over the years:

  1. Someone gives me their id_rsa.pub
  2. I copy it into .ssh/authorized_keys
  3. I ask them to test
  4. Some time later, they test and report it doesn't work.
  5. I mess around with line feeds, permissions etc, go back to step 3.

Is there any way (obviously without asking for their private key) to verify that a public key has been installed correctly?

ssh

1 Answers

  1. TROUBLESHOOTING

    On your remote server, run the following:

    ls -la ~/.ssh | grep "authorized_keys"

    You should see output similar to the following:

    -rw-------  1 example.com example.com 398 Jul 15 10:32 authorized_keys

    Note that the directory needs to include the file called authorized_keys with -rw------- (600) permissions.

    Finally, run this command to check the permissions on your .ssh directory:

    $ ls -ld ~/.ssh
drwx------   2 example.com example.com     3 Jul 15 10:32 .ssh

    You should have a folder called .ssh with drwx------ (700) permissions.

    If for either of these tests, you get blank output, or a message similar to the following:

    ls: /root/.ssh: No such file or directory

    Please repeat Steps 1 and 4-5 above.

    Found this here

    • -1