How to ssh-copy-id multiple hosts using cat, xargs and sshpass
Imagine the following scenario: create ssh keys and copy the public key to 100 hosts!, ok this is a borring task but it can automated with an one-liner with the help of xargs and sshpass
Steps:
- Create a file with the hosts that you want to copy the public ssh key
- Install sshpass if needed
- With the following command you can deploy the public key to the list of hosts, change username and password to match your environment
$ cat hosts.txt | xargs -t -I {} sshpass -p mypassword ssh-copy-id username@{}A short explaination of the one-liner
cat hosts.txt : outputs host.txt content to xargs
xargs -t -I {}: -t prints the command that will executed, usefull for debug. -I {} advices xargs to replace {} with the content from hosts.txt
sshpass -p : wraps before an ssh command with a predefined password
ssh-copy-id: a script that copies the public key to a host, {} will be replaced by xargs with content from hosts.txt
