Question

I created a ssh key-pair and published the key as part of my github account. Now I would like to access my account from a different machine (say an EC2 instance), so I copied my ~/.ssh/id_rsa* files into the target machine and was able to checkout code.

Is this an acceptable procedure or should I generate a different key pair on that machine and also publishing that key into my github account.

Answer 1

Yes you can use the same key.
If you are the only developer and do not require any audit logging, then it really does not matter.

If you are working as apart of a team, issuing multiple keys makes it easy to revoke access when that is necessary and move team members from one project to another.

However, in your instance, can you use the same ssh keypair?.. Yes you can.

Also -> Do you control who has access to each machine?

As a side note however, I am the only developer on a particular project, but on this project I have worked from about six different sites. For each of these sites, I have used a different key. I have done this so that I can easily revoke access when I was working from a different office. So that is one instance where even though I am a sole developer, and did not require any logs, I still used multiple keys. (I don’t work just from location and I can’t control who has access to the machines which have the keys.).