Generating your SSH Key on Linux

How to Create an SSH Key on Linux:

Linux has OpenSSH built right in, and it only takes one command to set it up!

Here's how to generate an SSH key on any version of Linux*: (Linux replaces the tilde character, ~, with your entire home directory path.)

mkdir -p ~/.ssh/
ssh-keygen -t ed25519

You can just press enter for each prompt.

This will generate your SSH private key in the file ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 and your public key in the file ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub. (Note the .pub).

You can then upload your public key to Userify or Github by copying and pasting the contents of ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub in your home directory to Userify. Just cat the file and copy it from your terminal and paste it into Userify:

cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub

That's it! You now know how to generate an SSH key! Your private key is stored in id_ed25519.

Important: your public key is the same name with the .pub on the end (id_ed25519). You should never copy your private key or store it anywhere else, but your public key is, you know, public; you can put it anywhere. Just generate a new private key on any new devices that you use and then just paste your public key into your servers' authorized_keys files (or Userify, which manages your team's authorized_keys and sudo permissions for you).

Now that you've put your public key onto a remote server (via Userify above or similar), you can instantly log in without typing a password, just by typing in:

ssh YourUserifyUsername@ServerIP

If your Userify username is different from your Linux username, you can either ssh username@IP each time or just add the following to .ssh/config, and then just ssh IP and drop your username from the command.

In your home directory's .ssh/ directory, create a file named config:

Host *
    User YourUserifyUsername

Compatibility: This has been tested on various versions of Linux running OpenSSH, including Ubuntu, Debian, MX, Fedora, CentOS, Red Hat (RHEL), OpenSUSE and SUSE, Rocky, Alma, Void, various versions of Arch like Manjaro and Artix, and various versions of UNIX including FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD. This also works in Windows in the Ubuntu on WSL2 system on Windows 10/11, but you might prefer using Putty, SecureCRT, or another Windows app.

Also, this produces more secure and modern (and shorter!) curve 25519 (ED25519) keys, but if you prefer the older RSA keys, or you have to talk to an older system that doesn't support ED25519, just remove the -t ed25519 from the ssh-keygen command in the first step above.