18.10 Installing the Public Key for a Google Cloud Instance
If your Ubuntu system is hosted by Google Cloud, for example as a Compute Engine instance, there are a number of different ways to gain SSH access to the server using key-based authentication. Perhaps the most straightforward is to add your public key to the metadata for your Google Cloud account. This will make the public key available for all Virtual Machine instances that you create within Google Cloud. To add the public key, log into the Google Cloud Platform console, select the Metadata option from the left-hand navigation panel as highlighted in Figure 18-5 followed by the SSH keys tab:
On the SSH Keys screen, click on the Edit button (also highlighted in Figure 18-5) to edit the list of keys. Scroll down to the bottom of the current list and click on the + Add Item button. A new field will appear into which you will need to paste the entire public key as it appears in your id_rsa.pub file. Once...