How to Retrieve the Public Key from an SSH Private Key

command linessh

A SSH private key as generated by ssh-keygen contains a public key part. How do I retrieve this public key from the private key? I've lost my public key and need to put the contents of this public key in the servers authorized_keys file and do not want to create a new key pair.

Alternatively phrased: how do I create the id_rsa.pub file from a id_rsa file?

Best Answer

I've found the answer on Server Fault: Create a public SSH key from the private key?

The option -y outputs the public key:

ssh-keygen -y -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa > ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

As a side note, the comment of the public key is lost. I've had a site which required the comment (Launchpad?), so you need to edit ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub and append a comment to the first line with a space between the comment and key data. An example public key is shown truncated below.

ssh-rsa AAAA..../VqDjtS5 ubuntu@ubuntu

For keys that were added to the SSH Agent (a program that runs in the background and avoids the need for re-entering the keyfile passphrase over and over again), you can use the ssh-add -L command to list the public keys for keys that were added to the agent (via ssh-add -l). This is useful when the SSH key is stored on a smart card (and access to the private key file is not possible).

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