[CentOS] OpenSSH multiple private key question

Wed Sep 26 19:02:03 UTC 2007
Jim Perrin <jperrin at gmail.com>

On 9/26/07, Von Landfried <centos.list at eyestreet.com> wrote:
> I am using CentOS 4.5 with OpenSSH_3.9p1 and I am curious if anyone
> has a solution for this scenario. I have several pub/priv keys that I
> use for various tasks/reasons. My issue is that I want to have 2
> private keys stored in ~/.ssh/ and I am not sure the best way to
> accomplish that. Currently I am using ssh-agent, and it works fine
> for manually performing tasks. I was curious if there is a simple way
> to have multiple private keys stored in the same ~/.ssh/ directory
> without using ssh-agent? Thanks for reading.


You can create a ~/.ssh/config file with host shortcuts that specify
specific keys for specific hosts. This would seem to be what you're
trying to do. You can also set default usernames for each host in case
you don't have common accounts on all boxen.

Sample below:

Host yourbox
HostName yourbox.example.com
User snuffy
IdentifyFile ~/.ssh/some_private_key.rsa

Host someotherbox
....



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