Didn’t have public key added to the VM that was locked down, needed a way to paste the long id_ssh.pub key to the vm’s authorized_keys.

Process

Local Machine

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048
eval `ssh-agent -c` 
ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa
cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Copy the key…

virt-manager or virt-viewer etc

Inside the VM via virt-manager or virt-viewer enable the tty for use with virsh.

systemctl enable serial-getty@ttyS0.service
systemctl start serial-getty@ttyS0.service
systemctl status serial-getty@ttyS0.service

Make sure the virt-manager window is not open for the VM you want to attach.

virsh console

SSH into the hypervisor then connect to the console that was just made.

ssh 
virsh console vmdomainnamehere --safe

If there is just a cursor and you can’t type… it might not be working, otherwise it may just be waiting for you to type the username and password so try that.

Login:
username
Password:
password
vi ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Paste in massive key, save and should be good to go.

To exit type exit then push CTRL + ]

Note: If you don’t type exit the next person that types the virsh console command will not be prompted for a password. You may want to disable the tty systemctl service that was started after finished for security reasons.