Failed to add the host to the list of known hosts - Accidentally removed all files from my .ssh folder

Question

Noob here. I removed all the files from my /Users/fakename/.shh folder. The result is that now I can't git clone a repository from beanstalk. When I try I get the error Failed to add the host to the list of known hosts Permission denied (public key). I am also having problems doing a SSH login into an EC2 instance on Amazon Web Services.

What would be the steps to get things back to normal?

EDIT 1

I am currently trying to generate a new rsa key pair, but getting the following:

open /Users/fake-name/.ssh/id_rsa failed: Permission denied.
Saving the key failed: /Users/fake-name/.ssh/id_rsa.

Have you tried a `touch known_hosts` and chmod 644 on the new file inside the .ssh directory? Perhaps it can't create the file on its own. — asafreedman, Oct 02 '13 at 12:10
asafreedman Yes, I have done exactly that. It didn't work. But thanks for the suggestion. — Eric Brotto, Oct 02 '13 at 12:14
if you dont have backup, you need to generate a new key pair — Mali, Oct 02 '13 at 12:25

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:29

2

You can't recover the already lost keys.

Change the ownership of the ~/.ssh directory to your user

sudo chown fakename:fakename .ssh

and generate a new pair of rsa keys using ssh-keygen

Regarding recovering your ec2 instance, check out the answers on this if your Users folders is EBS backed, else if you are the only user, you are screwed

edited May 23 '17 at 12:29

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answered Oct 02 '13 at 12:40

Anshul Goyal

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Failed to add the host to the list of known hosts - Accidentally removed all files from my .ssh folder

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