So, you have an SSH key pair. The public key has been added on to the server. On the client, ie your laptop/desktop you have your private key. For some reason, your private key has not been loaded into memory.

All you have to do is start the ssh-agent and then load the key into memory via ssh-add.

Step 1: Start the agent

eval $(ssh-agent)

Step 2: load the key into memory

What is SSH Key Management?

The blog post is intended towards someone new to SSH key management. Do you have just one SSH key pair? Do you have multiple key pairs? What are some pros and cons of having single or multiple key pairs? The post answers such questions about SSH key usage in practice.

The Premise

So, someone walked up to you or in a video call asked for your SSH public key?