Ssh – retrieve public key from ssh-agent

1. get the rsa key of your server, where server_ip is your server's IP address, such as 192.168.2.1:

   $ ssh-keyscan -t rsa server_ip
   

   Sample response:

   # server_ip SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_4.3
   server_ip ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEAwH5EXZG...
   

2. and on the client, copy the entire response line server_ip ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEAwH5EXZG..., and add this key to the bottom of your ~/.ssh/known_hosts file:

   server_ip ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEAqx9m529...(the offending key, and/or the very bottom of the `known_hosts` file)
   server_ip ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEAwH5EXZG... (line you're adding, copied and pasted from above)
   

Guess I'll have to answer my own question, as there doesn't seem to be any way to request an identity by file name.

I wrote a quick-and-dirty Python scripts which creates a public key file in .ssh/fingerprints for every key the agent holds. I can then specify this file, which contains no secret key, using IdentityFile and SSH will pick the right identity from the SSH agent. Works perfectly fine, and allows me to use the agent for as many private keys I wish.

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

"""Dumps all public keys held by ssh-agent and stores them in ~/.ssh/fingerprints/, so that
they can be identified using the IdentityFile directive.

"""

import sys, os
import stat
import re
import envoy

RE_MATCH_FILENAME = re.compile(r'([^\\/:*?"<>|\r\n]+)\.\w{2,}$', re.IGNORECASE)

if os.getuid() == 0:
    USERNAME = os.environ['SUDO_USER']
else:
    USERNAME = os.environ['USER']

def error(message):
    print "Error:", message
    sys.exit(1)

def main():
    keylist = envoy.run('ssh-add -L').std_out.strip('\n').split('\n')

    if len(keylist) < 1:
        error("SSH-Agent holds no indentities")

    for key in keylist:
        crypto, ckey, name = key.split(' ')
        filename = os.path.join(os.environ['HOME'], '.ssh/fingerprints',
                  RE_MATCH_FILENAME.search(name).group(1)+'.pub')

        with open(filename, 'w') as f:
            print "Writing %s ..." % filename
            f.write(key)

        envoy.run('chmod 600 %s' % filename)
        envoy.run('chown %s %s' % (USERNAME, filename))


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()