Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook - Third Edition

How to do it...

There are two steps to implement automatic authentication with SSH. They are as follows:

• Creating the SSH key on the local machine
• Transferring the public key to the remote host and appending it to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys (which requires access to the remote machine)

To create an SSH key, run the ssh-keygen command with the encryption algorithm type specified as RSA:

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa 
Generating public/private rsa key pair.  
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/username/.ssh/id_rsa):  
Created directory '/home/username/.ssh'.  
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):  
Enter same passphrase again:  
Your identification has been saved in /home/username/.ssh/id_rsa.  
Your public key has been saved in /home/username/.ssh/id_rsa.pub. ...