How to reuse your SSH key

If you want to change computers or format your current one and are already using your public SSH key to authenticate to servers and some accounts, it would be a lot of work to generate a new key in your new environment and change it in all the places you are using it, right?! I will help you solve this problem today with less work! =)

Before you format your computer or change it, you should copy the folder called .ssh somewhere, it can be a pen-drive. Usually, this folder is located in your home directory and is hidden. Then you can press Ctrl + H and it will appear.

Inside the .ssh folder, you will have some files named: id_rsa (your private key), id_rsa.pub (your public key), and one or a few configuration files. If they are under different names, at the time you generated them you may have renamed them, but that will be fine. By default, I will use the names id_rsa and id_rsa.pub.

Did you copy it to the desired destination? Yes? Then let’s proceed!

Now in your new environment without the keys, you will follow these steps:

Copy your .ssh folder from where you saved it and paste it in the home of your new environment:

Want to do it from the terminal? Below is the command to copy and paste the folder.

cp file_path destination_path

Now with your .ssh folder in your new home, make sure all files are in the right folder to proceed. Now let’s change the permissions of the keys:

sudo chmod 600 ~/.ssh/id_rsa 
sudo chmod 600 ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Ready? Now let’s start the ssh-agent in the background:

eval $(ssh-agent -s)

And finally, let’s make ssh-agent actually use your copied SSH Key:

ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa

And that’s it! Now you can access your accounts easily!

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