SSH Keys

SSH keys let you authenticate into IBEE Cloud servers securely without a password. Add your public key once to your account, then select it when creating a VM — it will be injected automatically at boot.

Before you begin

• An active IBEE Cloud project (Create a project)
• An SSH key pair on your local machine — generate one if you don’t have one yet:

$
# Generate an ed25519 key (recommended)
$
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "your-email@example.com"
$
$
# Or RSA
$
ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "your-email@example.com"

Your public key is at ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub (or ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub).

Add an SSH key

SSH Keys list

Delete a key

Click Delete in the Actions column. Deleting a key does not remove it from servers it was already deployed to — it only prevents the key from being selected for new servers.

Use an SSH key when creating a server

When creating a VM, select your saved SSH key in the SSH Key step. The key is injected into the server at first boot under the default user (typically root or ubuntu).

Connect to a server

Once a key is injected, connect with:

$
ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 root@<server-ip>

Troubleshooting

Key rejected — must start with ssh-rsa, ssh-ed25519, etc. Ensure you are pasting the public key (.pub file), not the private key. Public keys begin with ssh-rsa, ssh-ed25519, or similar.

Permission denied when connecting

• Verify the correct private key is being used with -i
• Check that the public key was selected during VM creation
• Ensure the server is running and the IP is correct

Key deleted but still works on an existing server Deleting a key from the portal only removes it from future server deployments. To revoke access on a running server, remove the key from ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the server.

Related pages

• Create a VM
• API Tokens