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SSH login without password

Your aim
You want to use Linux and OpenSSH to automize your tasks. Therefore you need an automatic login from host A / user a to Host B / user b. You don’t want to enter any passwords, because you want to call ssh from a within a shell script.

How to do it
First log in on A as user a and generate a pair of authentication keys. Do not enter a passphrase:

    a@A:~> ssh-keygen -t rsa
    Generating public/private rsa key pair.
    Enter file in which to save the key (/home/a/.ssh/id_rsa):
    Created directory '/home/a/.ssh'.
    Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
    Enter same passphrase again:
    Your identification has been saved in /home/a/.ssh/id_rsa.
    Your public key has been saved in /home/a/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
    The key fingerprint is:
    3e:4f:05:79:3a:9f:96:7c:3b:ad:e9:58:37:bc:37:e4 a@A

Now use ssh to create a directory ~/.ssh as user b on B. (The directory may already exist, which is fine):

    a@A:~> ssh b@B mkdir -p .ssh
    b@B's password:

Finally append a’s new public key to b@B:.ssh/authorized_keys and enter b’s password one last time:

    a@A:~> cat .ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh b@B 'cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys'
    b@B's password:

From now on you can log into B as b from A as a without password:

    a@A:~> ssh b@B hostname
    B
Published inTechnoblog

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