Add Public SSH Key to Remote Server in a Single Command

by Lowell Heddings on

If you want to setup SSH keys to allow logging in without a password, you can do so with a single command.

The first thing you’ll need to do is make sure you’ve run the keygen command to generate the keys:

ssh-keygen -t rsa

Then use this command to push the key to the remote server, modifying it to match your server name.

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh user@hostname 'cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys'

Lowell Heddings is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of How-To Geek. He spends all his free time making sure this site can bring you fresh geekery on a daily basis, and has been doing so for over eleven years.