This is an old revision of the document!
password-less ssh between linux machines
this was a pretty popular a howto article i wrote a while ago to my old blog which is now offline. hence i copied it here in case anybody still needs it:
ssh auto login under Linux
to be able to connect to an other linux box from one box without entering your password all the time do the folowing:
login to the connecting computer as the user who will later connect to the other box. execute
ssh-keygen -t rsa
and accept all defaults. you must leave the passphrase blank as well, otherwhise you’re going to be asked for that all the time, so it doesn’t do any good.
now you should have some files in your user’s home directory in .ssh/
id_rsa id_rsa.pub known_hosts
now we need to copy id_rsa.pub
(your public key) to the server you want to connect to. to connect to the server, you have to use the user you want to be logged in as later on.
scp .ssh/id_rsa.pub username@server:~/
now connect to the server through ssh and add the contents of the copied file to your ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2
if this is the first time you do that, then you have to create both, the directory and the file.
ssh username@server cat id_rsa.pub >> .ssh/authorized_keys2 exit
and now you should be able to login through
ssh username@server
without a password prompt
more detailed infos in german can be found here: http://www.kriegisch.at/~adi/docs/unix/ssh_autologin.html