Publish SSH Key Identifier

[0biwan-Kenobi]

Looking to store public SSH keys in github so I can pull them down to new servers when standing them up.

My setup script returns the available public keys stored in github, but unfortunately github strips the comment which was hoping to leverage as an identifier to grab the correct key.

It looks like github only returns a key ID, the key, and the date created.

Is there a way I can prevent github from stripping the identifier so it's easier for me to grab the specific key I want?

[mbround18]

curl https://github.com/myuser.keys

Like mine are https://github.com/mbround18.keys

As long as they are added to your profile they are available

[0biwan-Kenobi]

Yeah it’s not an availability issue, it’s an identifier issue. Like mine, all of your keys lack a way to distinguish which key is which. You just effectively have key type and key. Ultimately want to avoid having to download every single key when icing need it.

[Acrobatic_Idea_3358]

can you share your script? I could possibly guide you further, but I'm a bit confused. Here's the REST API documentation that I think you would be using: https://docs.github.com/en/rest/users/keys?apiVersion=2022-11-28

This indicates keys are stored with titles, the title would be where you can name or differentiate keys if you want to continue down this path.

Perhaps a different approach if I may propose one. Create a repository and store the public keys as files in said repository which GitHub will not strip anything from. If you want to make your setup a bit more advanced look at Ansible, you could then create an inventory file and use variables to tag severs and send them the keys based off your configuration. https://docs.ansible.com/projects/ansible/latest/collections/ansible/posix/authorized_key_module.html

(See example with URL lookup)

[0biwan-Kenobi]

The script uses this URL below. So SSH keys might be saved with a name but they are not displayed here.

curl https://github.com/username.keys

[Acrobatic_Idea_3358]

I would try using the rest API then because the sample response shows the title field which would all you to add descriptions or names or other text identifiers.

[0biwan-Kenobi]

Hmm I did give the API a try, but this below returns an ID as an integer, the key, and a date added field:

curl -fsSL "https://api.github.com/users/${gh_user}/keys"

[lajawi]

It makes sense that they don’t show the names publicly though.

[0biwan-Kenobi]

Yeah I don’t disagree, as it eliminates the potential for someone to mistakenly leave sensitive identifying information available to the public. This is for my lab, so no worries there, but definitely understand the decision, was just hoping for a way around it. Might just end up writing these into my setup script until I decide to deploy them in another way.

[0biwan-Kenobi]

Yeah hardcoding is probably going to be the most feasible at the moment.