How to add ssh key to qcow2 Linux cloud images using virt-sysprep

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You can add an SSH key to a Linux cloud image in a qcow2 format using the virt-sysprep utility. Here are the steps:

  1. Boot the cloud image in a virtual machine.
  2. Install the virt-sysprep utility:
    # apt-get update
    # apt-get install libguestfs-tools
  3. Copy your SSH public key to the virtual machine:
    $ ssh-copy-id user@virtual-machine
  4. Run the virt-sysprep utility to customize the cloud image:
     
    # virt-sysprep -a /path/to/image.qcow2

This will modify the cloud image /path/to/image.qcow2 and add your SSH public key to the authorized_keys file of the root user. After this, you can use ssh to log in to a virtual machine created from this cloud image without entering a password.

Note that the above steps assume that the cloud image uses a Debian-based Linux distribution. The exact steps may vary depending on the Linux distribution used in the cloud image.

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