Setting up public key authentication over SSH

Generate key on local machine
ssh-keygen -t rsa

It will ask you for a password but you can leave it blank.

Note you could also pick -t dsa if you prefer.

Ensure that the remote server has a .ssh directory

Make sure the server your connecting to has a .ssh directory in your home directory. If it doesn’t exist you can run the ssh-keygen command above, and it will create one with the correct permissions.

Copy your local public key to the remote server

If your remote server doesn’t have a file called ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2 then we can create it. If that file already exists, you need to append to it instead of overwriting it, which the command below would do:

scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub remote.server.com:.ssh/authorized_keys2

Now ssh to the remote server
Now you can ssh to the remote server without entering your password.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


*