Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook - Third Edition

Getting ready

SSH uses an encryption technique called asymmetric keys consisting of two keys–a public key and a private key for automatic authentication. The ssh-keygen application creates an authentication key pair. To automate the authentication, the public key must be placed on the server (by appending the public key to the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file) and the private key file of the pair should be present at the ~/.ssh directory of the user at the client machine. SSH configuration options (for example, path and name of the authorized_keys file) can be modified by altering the /etc/ssh/sshd_config configuration file.