How to generate ssh keys

Hello there! In this short article I want to show you how to generate fresh ssh keys and copy them to your server for passwordless login. You’ll need a Linux machine to follow through.

First step is to generate the keys. I don’t advise to use a passphrase for the private key, you’ll be asked for it every time you login to the server, which is not ideally.

$ ssh-keygen -f ./id_rsa
$ ls
id_rsa  id_rsa.pub

Here we have generated a private and a public key. Just keep them safe and don’t share with unauthorized persons!

Now the second step is to copy the public key to your server. Replace {user} and {host} with your machine credentials. When prompted, type your credential password for the user you supplied.

$ ssh-copy-id -i id_rsa.pub {user}@{host}

After this step is completed, it’s time to test the connection:

$ ssh -i id_rsa {user}@{host}

You should now be granted access without password. Please note that in this tutorial I saved the key separately but you can choose to save it to your home folder and thus to avoid using the -i switch. Hope it’s useful to you!

I use the SSH keys for passwordless login for connecting to my Raspberry PI!

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