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Can I add an SSH key to an existing droplet using my DigitalOcean credentials?

Posted on July 20, 2015

Is it possible to add an SSH key to a droplet without using the existing keys to log in?

I think this is possible by booting the recovery kernel, mounting the filesystem, and modifying /root/.ssh/authorized_keys, but that would involve manually typing in the SSH key, as the console access doesn’t appear to support copy-pasting.

Do I understand correctly that access to my DO account can be used to gain root access to an instance how I described above, and is there any simpler way of doing so?



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These Digital Ocean guides linked below should help:

How To Connect To Your Droplet with SSH

How To Set Up SSH Keys

I’m afraid not - I’m talking about recovering access to a droplet without using the SSH keys already on it.

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