Starting over with SSH on local machine

Question

I am using a Ubuntu 13.10 box to communicate with another local server, bitbucket (for Git) and a remote web host. I have decided that I do not like my current SSH key setup because things were not working the way they were supposed to, so I deleted the SSH keys on the remote accounts and am free to upload new ones at will.

For tidiness sake, I want to get rid of all existing SSH keys on my local machine and start over. Is it okay to simply delete the contents of the ~/.ssh directory, or is there a right way to do this?

Answer 1

Yeah, you should be able to remove it fairly safely.

But I'd take a backup or move it instead of deleting it. If there are any services where your only access is key-based (generally speaking, a good idea), you'd be locked out.

mv ~/.ssh ~/ssh-backup