🚀 SSH Cheat Sheet

A handy reference for ssh, ssh-keygen, and ssh-agent commands.

🔑 SSH Basics

Connect to a remote server

ssh [email protected]

Connect with a specific port

ssh -p 2222 [email protected]

Run a command on a remote server

ssh [email protected] "ls -lah /var/www"

Enable verbose mode (debugging connection issues)

ssh -v [email protected]

Use a specific SSH key

ssh -i ~/.ssh/custom_key [email protected]

Add an SSH configuration for easy access (`~/.ssh/config`)

Host myserver
    HostName remote-server.com
    User myuser
    Port 2222
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa
    ForwardAgent yes

➡ Now you can simply run:

ssh myserver

🔑 SSH Key Management (`ssh-keygen`)

Generate a new SSH key (RSA 4096-bit)

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "[email protected]"

Generate an ED25519 SSH key (stronger & faster than RSA)

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "[email protected]"

View the public key (copy this to add to servers like GitHub/GitLab)

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Add your SSH key to a remote server (manually)

ssh-copy-id [email protected]

Remove a passphrase from an existing SSH key

ssh-keygen -p -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Change the passphrase of an SSH key

ssh-keygen -p -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa -N "new_passphrase"

Convert OpenSSH to PEM format (for some legacy systems)

ssh-keygen -p -m PEM -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa

🔄 SSH Agent (`ssh-agent`)

Start the SSH agent (Linux/macOS)

eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"

Add an SSH key to the agent

ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa

List loaded SSH keys

ssh-add -l

Remove all SSH keys from the agent

ssh-add -D

Store SSH key in macOS Keychain (persistent across reboots)

ssh-add --apple-use-keychain ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Enable automatic loading of keys on macOS

echo "Host *\n  UseKeychain yes\n  AddKeysToAgent yes" >> ~/.ssh/config

🌐 SSH Tunneling & Port Forwarding

Local port forwarding (access a remote service locally)

ssh -L 8080:localhost:80 [email protected]

Now, you can open http://localhost:8080 to access remote port 80.

Remote port forwarding (expose a local service to the remote server)

ssh -R 9090:localhost:3000 [email protected]

This makes local port 3000 available as remote-server.com:9090.

Dynamic (SOCKS) Proxy

ssh -D 9090 [email protected]

This sets up a SOCKS proxy on localhost:9090.

🎯 Miscellaneous

Test SSH connection without executing commands

ssh -T [email protected]

Copy a file via SSH (`scp`)

scp file.txt [email protected]:/remote/path/

Copy a directory recursively via SSH

scp -r /local/dir [email protected]:/remote/path/

Sync files efficiently via `rsync`

rsync -avz -e ssh /local/dir [email protected]:/remote/path/

🔥 Troubleshooting SSH

Check SSH logs on the server

journalctl -u sshd --no-pager | tail -n 50

Restart the SSH service (Linux)

sudo systemctl restart sshd

Fix "Permissions are too open" error on SSH keys

chmod 600 ~/.ssh/id_rsa
chmod 644 ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Fix "Host key verification failed"

ssh-keygen -R remote-server.com

tomschall/ssh-cheat-sheet.md