Checking for existing SSH keys - giobim/Some-help-from-my-Friends GitHub Wiki

Before you generate an SSH key, you can check to see if you have any existing SSH keys.

  1. Open a shell.
  2. Enter ls -al ~/.ssh to see if existing SSH keys are present:
  3. Check the directory listing to see if you already have a public SSH key.

By default, the filenames of the public keys are one of the following:

$ ls -al ~/.ssh
-rw-------  1 auser auser 1184 Apr  7  2015 authorized_keys
-rw-------  1 auser auser 1679 Sep 12 12:56 id_rsa
-rw-r--r--  1 auser auser  402 Sep 12 12:56 id_rsa.pub
-rw-r--r--  1 auser auser 2507 Aug  4 08:41 known_hosts
$

If you don't have an existing public and private key pair, or don't wish to use any that are available to connect to your Login-Node account, then generate a new SSH key.

If you see an existing public and private key pair listed (for example id_rsa.pub and id_rsa) that you would like to use to connect to your Login-Node account, you can add your SSH key to the ssh-agent.