Where is my private key?

Question

I was following this tutorial to generate and assign a key to one of my servers, but before running ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/mykey user@host I was tring to find my private key and guess what I can't find it. :x

Sorry if this is recurring question but I've check this before but I can't get any answer to my question.

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So, I've run ssh-keygen then tried cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa/mykeynamebut there's no key.
Also ls ~/.ssh -a only shows the known_hosts file.

But I can see the public key in my home folder. mykey.pub

I'm kinda new to the ssh authentication process so I would love some help or if the case some link to another question ( I'll delete this question if needed).

Thanks in advance.

Solution

IF you followed that tutorial exactly i.e. answered mykey at the prompt

Enter file in which to save the key (/home/ylo/.ssh/id_rsa):

then it will be in a file called mykey in your current directory.

If you want it to be in the default location ~/.ssh/id_rsa then simply hit Enter at that prompt to accept the default value.

Comments

[kpuccino]

So, I've run ssh-keygen then tried cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa/mykeynamebut there's no key.

[kpuccino]

I'm not trying to be mean, and I know my English is not perfect. But, did you read my question?

[Terrance]

I did, and I understand how it works. The file name is ~/.ssh/id_rsa by default. If you typed in the name of mykey then you will have both a mykey which should be the private key and mykey.pub being the public in your ~/.ssh folder. If both files are not there, you did not follow the directions properly.

[muru]

id_rsa is supposed to be a file, not a directory. There can't be a ~/.ssh/id_rsa/mykeyname.

[kpuccino]

Okidoki, sorry for the "anger". Some people ask things for yesterday to unexperience people. Thanks for the help.

[Terrance]

Might I add a little note here. Those instructions can make it more difficult to use the private / public keys by making you have to type in the name of the key you have used every time you want to connect to the other host without a password. If you go with only the default settings, ssh will default to the key of id_rsa and there is no need to specify it every time you want to connect.

[kpuccino]

So how do you connect then? ssh -i user@host it's enough? It will fetch the ~/.ssh/id_rsa key? I'm adding the keys because I need create some scripts to migrate data.

[Terrance]

Mine is just ssh user@host after I have ran the ssh-copy-id user@host command without specifying a new key. Using the -i requires a name and if you have a lot of different ones then you will have to remember them all. Just a thought.

[kpuccino]

Many thanks, I'll need to dive in ssh docs to get more useful info.

[kpuccino]

Thanks my friend, yup that was my problem. I' ve create on my home dir, but since i've so many trashi didn't notice the private since it has no extension.