Your submission was sent successfully! Close

Thank you for signing up for our newsletter!
In these regular emails you will find the latest updates from Canonical and upcoming events where you can meet our team.Close

Thank you for contacting our team. We will be in touch shortly.Close

  1. Blog
  2. Article

Dustin Kirkland
on 25 February 2017

HOWTO: Automatically import your public SSH keys into LXD Instances


Just another reason why LXD is so awesome…

You can easily configure your own cloud-init configuration into your LXD instance profile.

In my case, I want cloud-init to automatically ssh-import-id kirkland, to fetch my keys from Launchpad.  Alternatively, I could use gh:dustinkirkland to fetch my keys from Github.

Here’s how!

First, edit your default LXD profile (or any other, for that matter):

$ lxc profile edit default

Then, add the config snippet, like this:

config:
user.vendor-data: |
#cloud-config
users:
- name: root
ssh-import-id: gh:dustinkirkland
shell: /bin/bash
description: Default LXD profile
devices:
eth0:
name: eth0
nictype: bridged
parent: lxdbr0
type: nic
name: default

Save and quit in your interactive editor, and then launch a new instance:

$ lxc launch ubuntu:x
Creating amazed-manatee
Starting amazed-manatee

Find your instance’s IP address:

$ lxc list
+----------------+---------+----------------------+----------------------------------------------+------------+-----------+
| NAME | STATE | IPV4 | IPV6 | TYPE | SNAPSHOTS |
+----------------+---------+----------------------+----------------------------------------------+------------+-----------+
| amazed-manatee | RUNNING | 10.163.22.135 (eth0) | fdce:be5e:b787:f7d2:216:3eff:fe1c:773 (eth0) | PERSISTENT | 0 |
+----------------+---------+----------------------+----------------------------------------------+------------+-----------+

And now SSH in!

$ ssh ubuntu@10.163.22.135
$ ssh -6 ubuntu@fdce:be5e:b787:f7d2:216:3eff:fe1c:773

Enjoy!

:-Dustin

Related posts


Simon Fels
20 March 2024

Implementing an Android™ based cloud game streaming service with Anbox Cloud

Cloud and server Article

Since the outset, Anbox Cloud was developed with a variety of use cases for running Android at scale. Cloud gaming, more specifically for casual games as found on most user’s mobile devices, is the most prominent one and growing in popularity. Enterprises are challenged to find a solution that can keep up with the increasing ...


Miona Aleksic
18 January 2023

Containerization vs. Virtualization : understand the differences

Cloud and server Article

Containerization vs. Virtualization : understand the differences and benefits of each approach, as well as connections to cloud computing. ...


Miona Aleksic
15 March 2024

LXD 5.21.0 LTS is now available

Cloud and server Article

5.21.0 LTS, the stable release of LXD, the system container and VM manager, is now available. ...