ssh-copy-id: ERROR: failed to create required temporary directory under ~/.ssh

Cannondale · 03-06-2023, 07:52 PM

New to linux and currently setting up ssh on a new workstation named shadow.
I have installed and configured ssh on several machines to date.
However, I am getting an error with ssh-copy-id that In have not seen before.

I have done the following:
Installed ssh on the new workstation (shadow)

Code:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -f ~/.ssh/id-25519

Attempted the ssh-copy-id and getting the error below:

Code:

sudo ssh-copy-id -i .ssh/id-25519.pub shadow
/usr/bin/ssh-copy-id: INFO: Source of key(s) to be installed: ".ssh/id-25519.pub"
mktemp: failed to create directory via template ‘/root/.ssh/ssh-copy-id.XXXXXXXXXX’: No such file or directory
/usr/bin/ssh-copy-id: ERROR: failed to create required temporary directory under ~/.ssh

Permissions on ~/.ssh are 700

I have verified that the public key path and name is: ~/.ssh/id-25519.pub

The "‘/root/.ssh/ssh-copy-id.XXXXXXXXXX’" part of the error massage is curious.
What am I missing?

evo2 · 03-06-2023, 07:57 PM

What user are you doing this as?

EDIT: LOL, just saw the use of "sudo".

michaelk · 03-06-2023, 07:58 PM

Code:

sudo ssh-copy-id -i .ssh/id-25519.pub shadow

Why are you using sudo? ssh automatically uses the current username which would be root if running it with sudo. You do not want to login as root and most distributions disable root login by default anyway.

If your usernames are not the same then you would want to use the desired user on the server.

ssh-copy-id -i .ssh/id-25519.pub username@shadow

Turbocapitalist · 03-06-2023, 07:59 PM

The use of sudo is throwing off the location. It runs the command as another user, by default that is root, but either way as another user. Try like this to get the key over to the system "shadow":

Code:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -f ~/.ssh/id-25519 -C "some useful comment about the nature of the key"
ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id-25519.pub username@shadow

Cannondale · 03-07-2023, 05:55 AM

Thanks for the feedback everyone! Removing sudo was the issue!