ssh-copy-id for Mikrotik to add public key to authorized_keys

RouterOS Scripting
1

Hi, I thought I would share this useful one-liner to copy your ssh key from Linux to RouterOS: (from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/68846248/how-can-i-add-my-ssh-public-key-to-a-mikrotik-router-device-using-the-command-li/68846249#68846249)

ssh 192.168.88.1 "/file print file=mykey; file set mykey contents=\"`cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub`\";/user ssh-keys import public-key-file=mykey.txt;/ip ssh set always-allow-password-login=yes"

Now you won’t need to enter your router password to log in to RouterOS with SSH. Hope it helps! It does the same as ssh-copy-id Linux command that nowadays works even on Windows and OSX.

Another tip is you can ssh into Routeros with username+ct@router instead of just username@router, then login will be even quicker. Add “user myname+ct” under “host router” section in /etc/ssh_config to make it the default. Also

/print detail

prints all the infos you need, that print hides because of its silly formatting.

2

thank you a bunch ! I couldn’t believe that ss-copy-id wasn’t support even in routerOS 7.1.1. I was getting this error after entering my router’s password during ssh-copy-id:

syntax error (line 1 column 6)
3

When I do this I get an error that it is the wrong format. I have also tried rsa encryption as well.

4

Tested on 6.49.8
Create new user with ‘write’ permission
Generate random password for newly created account.
Must be run from linux console.

ssh admin@192.168.88.1 "/file print file=mykey; /file set mykey.txt contents=\"`cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub`\";  /user add name=ansible group=write password=\"`tr -dc A-Za-z0-9 </dev/urandom | head -c 20`\"; /user ssh-keys import user=ansible public-key-file=mykey.txt;"