Josh and KD Curtiss

SSH Login Without Password Using ssh-keygen

Using ssh-keygen and ssh-copy-id, you can login to a remote server without entering a password. It effectively creates a trusted relationship between your local user and the remote server.

First, create the keys on your local machine:

ssh-keygen

Just press “Enter” through the options to use default values and empty password.

This should generate a file at ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.

Second, copy the public key to your remote host using ssh-copy-id:

ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub myremoteserver

That’s it! Now you can login without a password.

If ssh-copy-id did not work or is not available, you can copy the public key manually:

ssh myremoteserver mkdir -p .ssh
cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh myremoteserver 'cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys'