how do you create an ssh key for another user?

Question

I'm trying to create an ssh key for another user. I'm logged in as root. Can I just edit the files generated by ssh-keygen and change root to the user I want?

Answer 1

ssh keys should never be generated for another user. The private key is called private for a reason.

If you want to create a keypair for yourself you could do that with ssh-keygen.

ssh-keygen -f username creates 2files in the current directory. username.pub is the public key, which you could append to the users ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on your server.

The other file, just called username is the private key and therefore should be stored safely at the user. Default location would be ~/.ssh/id_rsa (here named id_rsa, which is default for rsa keys)

But technically you could store the key anywhere, but keep in mind the key is not allowed to be readable for anyone but the user.
With ssh -i path/to/privatekey you could specify that location, while connecting.

Answer 2

There's no user information in the SSH keys.

Last field in a public key is a comment (and can be changed by ssh-keygen -C newcomment).

No need to do anything special to make a key for another user, just put it in the right location and set permissions.

Answer 3

Become the user by using su and run the key as that user:

[root@kvm0001 ~]# su - joeuser
[joeuser@kvm0001 ~]$ ssh-keygen -t dsa (or rsa1 or rsa, depending on your security requirements)
Generating public/private dsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/joeuser/.ssh/id_dsa):