ssh rsync – Specify Identity File (id_rsa) with rsync

rsyncssh

I need to make periodic backups of a directory on a remote server which is a virtual machine hosted by a research organisation. They mandate that access to VMs is through ssh keys, which is all good, except that I can't figure out how to point rsync to the ssh key for this server.

Rsync has no problem if the key file is ~/.ssh/id_rsa, but when it is something else I get Permission denied (publickey).

With ssh I can specify the identity file with -i, but rsync appears to have no such option.

I have also tried temporarily moving the key on the local machine to ~/.ssh/id_rsa, but that similarly does not work.

tl;dr

Can you specify an identity file with rsync?

Best Answer

You can specify the exact ssh command via the '-e' option:

rsync -Pav -e "ssh -i $HOME/.ssh/somekey" username@hostname:/from/dir/ /to/dir/

Many ssh users are unfamiliar with their ~/.ssh/config file. You can specify default settings per host via the config file.

Host hostname
    User username
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/somekey

In the long run it is best to learn the ~/.ssh/config file.

Related Solutions

SSH only works if I specify the key with -i

As far as I'm aware, ssh only searches for keys with the name id_rsa, id_dsa and a few others which all start id_ as show in the output in your question. If you have keys named anything else you must specify them on the command line, or in an ssh config file.

Either rename your file key to something ssh searches for, or update .ssh/config with a relevant stanza, or use the -i option.

You can use something like this in .ssh/config

host my.target.server
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/key

You can also use,

host *
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/key

to force ssh to use ~/.ssh/key for all connections.

It may be easier to rename the key file to id_dsa or id_rsa though (assuming the file is actually called key as in your output).

Ssh – Specify Specific Identity file when ssh’ing as certain user in ~/.ssh/config

You should be able to do this with the Match directive e.g.

Host host2
  HostName host2.some.dom.ain
  Match user user1  
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_user1  
  Match user user2
    Identityfile ~/.ssh/id_user2

Best Answer

Related Solutions

SSH only works if I specify the key with -i

Ssh – Specify Specific Identity file when ssh’ing as certain user in ~/.ssh/config

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