Import ignores comments in SSH key

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XIII
XIII
Community Member
edited May 2022 in SSH

When importing an SSH key from file the comment is ignored.

Would it be possible to add the comment as a text field during import?

1Password Version: 80600027 Nightly
Extension Version: n/a
OS Version: macOS Big Sur 11.6.4

Comments

  • K.J._1P
    K.J._1P
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    Thanks for your feedback. Yes, it currently drops the comment. I can think of a few options and I'm curious which would best fit your use case:

    1. Use the comment as the item title
    2. Store the comment as a text field
    3. Keep the comment on the public key

    Option 3 seems like it would make editing the comment difficult. My preference is Option 1 because it could pair nicely with including the title as the comment when the 1Password agent offers public keys.

  • XIII
    XIII
    Community Member
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    I'd prefer option 1 in my use case.

  • floris_1P
    floris_1P
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    But then it would be best effort, because not every private key contains the comment embedded, or has an outdated comment compared to what's in the public key file. Automatically grabbing the corresponding .pub file is also not really an option, due to macOS sandboxing.

  • Lachy
    Lachy
    Community Member
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    Using the comment as the item title is not really ideal for everyone. The most common convention for comments I've seen is to use an email address or username because it is useful to identify who a given public key belongs to, particularly when they're listed in authorized_keys files. That's less useful to include as a title.

    I've chosen to go with the conventional key file names as the item title in 1Password. So I have titles like "id_ed25519", "id_rsa", etc. That also matches the names used when downloading the private or public key files. Though, on a related note, it would be nice if I could specify the name of the exported key file, such as "id_ed25519_personal", "id_ed25519_work" or whatever other conventions other people like to use.

    It would be useful to be able to include a comment when copying or downloading the public key, so having it as a text field would be good.

  • whitw
    whitw
    Community Member
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    Unsure if there's a way to +1 this, but I came here to ask this exact question.
    I think perhaps a text field would be the best solution for this, as the key is not strictly 'part' of the key itself.

    A great addition would be ensuring this is appended to the output of ssh-add -L

  • stuhall
    stuhall
    Community Member
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    @floris_1P - even if you can't read from the public key, you have to be able to support setting one and having it append to the stored public key for download purposes.

    It also presents an opportunity for you to present that comment difference between private / public and offer to update public.

    Ultimately, I don't mind if I lose comments from a public key upon import to 1Password, but I absolutely need a non-manual 'copy paste from notes field' way to enter a comment into the 1Password object and have it append on download / clipboard copy of public, along with being able to modify it.

This discussion has been closed.