Setting ssh security keys

23 January 2014

Avoid password authentication using ssh agent.

From shell

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa

Entering a passphrase when requested is highly recommendable. You will get the private-public keys pair in /home/user/.ssh : id_rsa id_rsa.pub

The latter must be exported to the remote host into authorized_keys file. In a single line it reads:

$ cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

ssh user@remote.host ‘cat » ~/.ssh/authorized_key’

Every time you start a new user session, fire from shell

$ ssh-add

and insert the passphrase. The following ssh tunnels will be opened without password requests.

The public key can be exported to as many machines as you like