You can login to a remote Linux server without entering password in 3 simple steps using ssky-keygen and ssh-copy-id as explained in this article.
ssh-keygen creates the public and private keys. ssh-copy-id copies the local-host’s public key to the remote-host’s authorized_keys file. ssh-copy-id also assigns proper permission to the remote-host’s home, ~/.ssh, and ~/.ssh/authorized_keys.
This article also explains 3 minor annoyances of using ssh-copy-id and how to use ssh-copy-id along with ssh-agent.
Step 1: Create public and private keys using ssh-key-gen on local-host
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jsmith@local-host$ [Note: You are on local-host here] jsmith@local-host$ <strong>ssh-keygen </strong>Generating public/private rsa key pair. Enter file in which to save the key (/home/jsmith/.ssh/id_rsa):[Enter key] Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): [Press enter key] Enter same passphrase again: [Pess enter key] Your identification has been saved in /home/jsmith/.ssh/id_rsa. Your public key has been saved in /home/jsmith/.ssh/id_rsa.pub. The key fingerprint is: 33:b3:fe:af:95:95:18:11:31:d5:de:96:2f:f2:35:f9 jsmith@local-host |
Step 2: Copy the public key to remote-host using ssh-copy-id
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jsmith@local-host$ <strong>ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub remote-host</strong> jsmith@remote-host's password: Now try logging into the machine, with "ssh 'remote-host'", and check in: .ssh/authorized_keys to make sure we haven't added extra keys that you weren't expecting. |
Step 3: Login to remote-host without entering the password
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jsmith@local-host$ <strong>ssh remote-host</strong> Last login: Sun Nov 16 17:22:33 2008 from 192.168.1.2 [Note: SSH did not ask for password.] jsmith@remote-host$ [Note: You are on remote-host here] |
