Add an SSH Key to Ubiquiti EdgeRouter
Table of Contents
I had a bit of trouble adding an ssh key to my Ubiquiti EdgeRouter 6P. I kept getting
Not a valid key file format (see man sshd) at /opt/vyatta/sbin/vyatta-load-user-key.pl line 96, <$in> line 1.
Turned out that the key needs to:
- have a comment
- not have any spaces in the comment
- be on a line of it’s own in the imported file (e.g. do not add a newline at the end)
for loadkey to accept it.
Example
While my normally used pubkey has spaces in the comment, this was an easy fix once I knew what Vyatta’s problem is. I edited the import file to look as follows
ssh-rsa AAAAB3Nza…U6WQPNk= private_key
Importing
Once these conditions are met, save the key in a file on the EdgeRouter
(e.g. /tmp/my_pubkey) and then import that file as follows;
configure
loadkey <user> /tmp/my_pubkey
commit
save
exit