The ESC key, iOS and the Apple Smart Keybaord

I have remote Linux servers that I want to manage. There are many apps in the App Store for doing this. I am using one of the top apps, Prompt. Prompt is a full functional terminal app supporting username/password logins as well as SSH key logins.

PasswordAuthentication no

PubkeyAuthentication yes

ChallengeResponseAuthentication no

I configured SSH on my Linux servers to disable password login for root and allow public key authentication only. I can access the Linux console from the Digital Ocean web front end (two-factor auth). I generate a public SSH key in Prompt and copy to clipboard.

I need to add the public SSH key for the iPad Pro to the .ssh/authorized_keys file. I access my Linux console in the DO web front end and open the authorize_keys files in Vim. I paste in the public key but ... neither the Apple Smart Keyboard, nor the default iOS keyboard have an escape key.

Prompt (and the many other terminal apps in the App Store) provide a virtual ESC key but I can’t use Prompt to access my servers until I add the iPad Pro SSH key to the server.

Argh!

It seems the only thing I can do is to enable password logins, login with Prompt, add the SSH key, then disable password logins.

I visited the Apple Support forums and poked around the web ... but I found more questions than answers.

The iPad Pro is marketed as being the iPad for professionals but I think this mostly applies to non-technical professionals.

  • Prompt 2.67

  • iOS 12.01

  • 10.5" iPad Pro