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I have moved my private key to a new PC. Permissions are correct (0600) However, ssh user@server doesn't use the migrated key I tried creating the config file for that host, but still nothing

The key works if referenced directly via ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa user@server

Can't seem to find any useful info on migrating private keys between computers (except: just copy)

What am I doing wrong?

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2 Answers 2

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In your ~/.ssh/config on your old computer, you should have a line similar to the one below,

Host server
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa

This is what tells ssh to use the key without having to specify it manually.

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  • Done that, didn't work. In the end, adding Host * was the solution. But the computer where I created the key didn't have the config file
    – Tomislav Plečko
    Jun 12, 2019 at 13:19
  • That's because the asterisk means for any host. So if you were connecting to github.com it would be Host github.com.
    – oxr463
    Jun 12, 2019 at 21:57
  • The problem was that ssh didn't use my key for any connections (computer where I generated the key doesn't have the config file, but ssh uses the only available key. On the new pc, I had to use Host *
    – Tomislav Plečko
    Jun 13, 2019 at 7:01
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Adding

Host *
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa

resolved the issue

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