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Comment by est

5 days ago

so it's good practice to store key in non-default location and use ~/.ssh/config to point the path for each host?

5 comments

est

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9dev  5 days ago

What a great case of "you're holding it wrong!" I need to add individual configuration to every host I ever want to connect to before connecting to avoid exposing all public keys on my device? What if I mistype and contact a server not my own by accident?

This is just an awfully designed feature, is all.

  • est  5 days ago

    > add individual configuration to every host I ever want to connect

    Are you AI?

    You can wildcard match hosts in ssh config. You generally have less than a dozen of keys and it's not that difficult to manage.

    • kemotep  5 days ago

      I have over a dozen ssh keys (one for each service and duplicates for each yubikey) and other than the 1 time I setup .ssh/config it just works.

      I have the setting to only send that specific host’s identity configured or else I DoS myself with this many keys trying to sign into a computer sitting next to me on my desk through ssh.

      Like I can’t imagine complaining about adding 5 lines to a config file whenever you set up a new service to ssh onto. And you can effectively copy and paste 90% of those 5 short lines, just needing to edit the hostname and key file locations.