SSH login without password

This is one of the things every command line geek needs every once in a while. Note that you should never do this on a public computer. If you have not generated an RSA key yet, do it with this command:

ssh-keygen -t rsa

You can decide whether to use a password or not. Then, display the key with

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Copy the key to clipboard and log in with ssh to your server you want to have passwordless. On the remote server, run

nano ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Paste the key to that file and save it (in nano it’s CTRL+O and to quit use CTRL+X). If you prefer vim, use it instead of nano. If .ssh directory cannot be found, create it with mkdir ~/.ssh and edit the authorized_keys as above.

After this, you can ssh into the machine without having to type a password.

Roni Laukkarinen

Editor-in-chief and owner of Geeky Lifestyle blog. Truly a jack of all trades, a Swiss knife; an avid tech and multimedia geek, coder, owner of a digital agency company, sysadmin, music enthusiast, artist and film critic.