Creating and Using SSH Keys to Access SCS Hosts

To access CS computing hosts, you may need to use SSH Keys. You must first generate a public/private pair of keys and then install the public key on the host you want to connect to. Below are some steps to accomplish that. IST has provided documentation for SSH Key Generation on a variety of client machines.

For example, to create an ssh key to connect to linux.cs.uwaterloo.ca from a typical Linux (Ubuntu) client system, simply type the following on your local machine. Please note, once the SSH restrictions are in place, you will need to have the VPN active for the ssh-copy-id command to work:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519   
     (accept the default options), thens
sh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 linux.cs.uwaterloo.ca
    (you should be prompted for your CS General password)

You can also manually copy your public key into the remote host by appending your key into linux.cs:~/.ssh/authorized_keys with a text editor. This method requires a new line for each key and no empty lines (especially at the end of the file). Formatting errors will likely block access to your account. Please test access from a different client window/session before logging out of the session where you make the change!