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I recently got a new computer and I'm trying to use ssh-copy-id to put my keys on another server so I can login without password. but when I try 

ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub user@server

and after inputting the correct password it returns

Ambiguous output redirect.

There are no other messages after that. I thought it was maybe just Ubuntu 12.10 so I installed Linux Mint 14 and sure enough exact same thing happens.

I've tried removing authorized_keys from the remote server but that didn't change anything.

Marc
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    Does it happen on all servers, or just that one server? ssh-copy-id is just a shell script that open ssh, and runs some commands. So I am guessing that perhaps their is something odd with the shell on the server you are connecting to? – Doon Dec 14 '12 at 14:33
  • I think Doon is on the right track. Does the shell emit weird characters when it starts up (this is something that breaks rsync when transporting over ssh)? Check your .bash_profile, .bashrc or whatever you've set up for a shell. – cjc Dec 14 '12 at 16:40
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    ssh-copy-id is a trivial shell script. Why not just try manually running the required commands. `cat pubkey | ssh remote 'umask 077; mkdir -p .ssh; cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys'` If that doesn't work, connect to the box, and try manually running those commands. – Zoredache Dec 27 '12 at 18:03
  • @Doon I've tried on 3 of my web servers, 1 x FreeBSD 7.3 and 2 x FreeBSD 7.4. It does work however when I try to ssh-copy-id to a local CentOS box and if I try to ssh-copy-id from this CentOS box to any of the 3 web servers it works fine. As a side note, when I do ssh-copy-id from the CentOS box I get a 26 outputted on the screen when I try to shh-copy-id to the web servers. – Marc Jan 10 '13 at 20:05

1 Answers1

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This is what worked for me, thanks to Zoredache.

Be sure to replace $REMOTE_HOST with the host. NOTE: This assumes certain directories.

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh $REMOTE_HOST 'umask 077; mkdir -p ~/.ssh; cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys'
Jonathan
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