doesn't accept multiple keys in id_rsa

[wretched_dutchman]

When maintaining multiple servers with different rsa-keys it isn't possible to put all the files in ~/.ssh/id_rsa.
With multiple keys in ~/.ssh/id_rsa it only accepts the first key, the rest is ignored.
the way I create the id_rsa file:
cat id_rsa_server >> ~/.ssh/id_rsa

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

I don't understand what you're trying to do. The id_rsa file is only supposed to contain one key; you can put other keys in different files. What are you trying to achieve by putting multiple keys in one file?

[Tomas Pospisek (tpo-deb)]

wretched_dutchman wrote:

> > When maintaining multiple servers with different rsa-keys it isn't possible to put all the files in ~/.ssh/id_rsa.

Colin answered:

> I don't understand what you're trying to do. The id_rsa file is only supposed to contain one key; you can put other keys in
> different files. What are you trying to achieve by putting multiple keys in one file?

I'm having the same problem I guess:

There are several servers that have different public keys. Now I find out that I want to log into them from the same client machine. I could go and copy all the private keys to different id_rsa files:

- id_rsa1
- id_rsa2
- id_rsa3

Now why would I need/want to differentiate the keys? I don't care what they are named. I just want to log in with whatever key fits (to use a RL analogy: I'd just try to plug in one key after the other into the lock until one opens it).

So I'd say this is more of a feature request?
*t

[Tomas Pospisek (tpo-deb)]

> Now why would I need/want to differentiate the keys? I don't care what they are named. I just want to log in with whatever > key fits (to use a RL analogy: I'd just try to plug in one key after the other into the lock until one opens it).

So I'd like to say something like: use whatever key fits. So either I'd need to give start ssh like this:

   ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa1 -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa2 -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa3 -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa4 ...

which is bothersome or, the natural way would seem like saying:

   ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa

respectively by using the default identity file:

   ssh ...

which would use whatever key in id_rsa that works with the public key on the server.
*t

[Thierry Carrez (ttx)]

The correct way of doing this is to specify multiple "IdentityFile" lines in your ~/.ssh/config

The id_rsa[.pub] files represent a keypair and isn't supposed to contain multiple identities, but it's easy and perfectly valid to use several keys, either by using -i or IdentityFile. Closing as this is not a bug and not really a missing feature.

[Steve Lacy (7-launchpad-slacy-com)]

To give more detail, here's what your ~/.ssh/config file needs to look like:

Host *
IdentityFile id_rsa.pub
Host hostname_with_special_keys.com
IdentifyFile id_rsa.hostname_with_special_keys.pub
Host another_host.com
IdentityFile id_rsa.another_host.pub

The actual hostnames and file names are arbitrary, and do not need to match. By doing this, you won't need to specify -i on the commandline each time.