---
title: 'HOWTO: Automatically import your public SSH keys into LXD Instances'
description: 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.  Alternat
  […]
url: https://canonical.com/blog/howto-automatically-import-your-public-ssh-keys-into-lxd-instances?format=md
---

1. [Blog](https://canonical.com/blog)
2. Article

---

[Dustin Kirkland](https://canonical.com/blog/author/kirkland "More about Dustin Kirkland")

25 February 2017

# HOWTO: Automatically import your public SSH keys into LXD Instances

[cloud-init](https://canonical.com/blog/tag/cloud-init)
[containers](https://canonical.com/blog/tag/containers)
[LXD](https://canonical.com/blog/tag/lxd)

---

Share the article

Just another reason why [LXD](http://linuxcontainers.org/) is so awesome…

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

In my case, I want *[cloud-init](http://cloud-init.org/)* 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

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