How to add a custom private SSH key?

[aws-samples]

How to add a custom private SSH key?

[mimicarina]

I experimented with this and the below worked for me. Need to run the ssh-add as sudo and keep environment variables set with -e.

#!/bin/bash
set -e

sudo -u ec2-user -i <<'EOF'
unset SUDO_UID
echo "Activate agent"
cd /home/ec2-user
eval `ssh-agent -s`
ssh-add /home/ec2-user/SageMaker/.ssh/id_rsa
echo "Check for key"
ps aux | grep ssh

EOF

[markjreed]

? "set -e" doesn't "keep environment variables set". It turns on the "errexit" (error exit) flag, which will cause the whole script to terminate immediately if any of the commands it runs signals an error.

I don't know why you are unsetting SUDO_UID; ssh-agent doesn't have any references to that. And SUDO_USER will still be set to the original username.

Note that ssh-agent is for keeping keys around in memory so (1) you can forward the agent connection for use on machines that don't have the key on their file systems, and (2) you don't have to type a passphrase every time you run an ssh command. If the key is already in a file on the instance and not passphrase protected, you don't need ssh-agent; just tell ssh to use that file (e.g. by putting IdentityFile /home/ec2-user/SageMaker/.ssh/id_rsa in /home/ec2-user/.ssh/config).