Simple Key Manager (SKM) is a small shell script designed to simplify common interactions with SSH keys.

Maintaining multiple keys is a lot of work for very little benefit: if the main workstation is compromised, all of the keys on that workstation are compromised, so using multiple keys for a single identity (person, machine, workstation, etc) doesn't really provide any additional security benefits. The author recommends using a single key, and automating as much as possible to reduce or remove the need to ever connect directly to a remote host.

The following content represents the README prior to deprecation.

By default, SKM makes a few assumptions about how your keys are stored. I'll list these below:

1. Both public and private keys are stored in ~/.ssh/keys

SKM was designed with the idea of "grouped" keys. Often times, I find myself booting up one of my machines to ssh into few servers, or to work on a few specific projects -- before shutting down again.

Because of this, SKM supports adding keys to the agent one at a time, in groups, or all at once. "Groups" are created by naming your keyfiles with a common prefix. Look to the table below for an example.

Note that you do not need to follow this naming scheme if you do not want to take advantage of the grouping feature. You are free to name your keys whatever you wish, and skm add will handle it properly.

git clone https://github.com/bddenhartog/simple-key-manager

cd simple-key-manager

chmod u+x skm

ln -sf $(pwd)/skm /usr/bin/skm

You can replace /usr/bin in the last command with any directory in your PATH.

Now on to the easy bit. Review the table below and you're good to go!

Please create an issue for any bugs, feature requests, or other comments.

Thank you for checking out my project! I hope it's helpful!