Ask HN: What is your naming convention for SSH keys?

2 points

6 years ago

Last night I wrote a simple wrapper around ssh-keygen with (in)sane defaults[1], since every time I need to create an SSH key, I go through my bash history to remember what were the parameters I used before.

While writing it, it got me thinking: is there any sort of best practices for naming these keys, especially when you connect to many servers, and services using it?

Right now I just make silly references — e.g., the key I use for a server that I log in with username Moss, is called "The Internet Key", as an IT Crowd reference —, and for the wrapper, I used a random suffix, and prefix generated with apg[2].

So, what do you folks use as a naming convention? If you were to generate keys for your customers, for example, what would you name them?

[1] https://git.sr.ht/~jamesponddotco/dotfiles/tree/master/.local/bin/gen-ssh-key

[2] https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/focal/man1/apg.1.html