Passwordless SSH Login

There are some commands that I only need every 6th new moon or so. Since I am not getting any younger I regularly have to google them.

So, here is another quick post on how you to make SSH-logins authenticate via certificate instead of password.

On the host create the private and the public key:

ssh-keygen

Just hit enter to keep the default values.

Usually, I only needs this for some uncritical test- and development-setups where security does not matter that much.

There will be two files in ~/ssh.

One is private key id_rsa and id_rsa is the public key.

Now copy the public key to the server with:

ssh-copy-id <username>@<host>

Check if it is possible to log into the server without having to provide the password:

ssh <username>@<host>

Yes, it is really that simple.