I’m writing this post just as a quick note to save somewhere the steps to follow in order to get connected to a remote SSH server without have to enter a user password for each connection.
I came across this when started using the Remote-SSH extension for Visual Studio Code, then for each modification I was asked to enter a password!
In the following example, I’m connecting from a Windows 10 as a Client, to Ubuntu as SSH Server:
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C:\Users\user>ssh-keygen -t rsa
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
after the execution of the command above ssh-keygen you’re asked to choose a file where to save the rsa key (I used the default one by pressing Enter). The same thing for passphrase, just tape enter to use empty passphrase if you’re using a local environment.
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Enter file in which to save the key (C:\Users\user/.ssh/id_rsa):
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
If they key is generated successfully, you get something like the following response:
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Your identification has been saved in C:\Users\user/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in C:\Users\user/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
SHA256:wjB7gpc9icYrRV9a8ABZcAcENeKO8/XFoEilne7e838 domain\admin@sshclient
The key's randomart image is:
+---[RSA 2048]----+
| =OB.. . |
| ..o+o + + |
| + ++ + o |
| o.o o++ o |
| ...+++ S |
| . o+ o |
| + o.. . |
|o B +. . .. E|
| +.o... . .o.... |
+----[SHA256]-----+
Once the key is generated, we need now to save the public key in Autorized Keys of the remote SSH server.
Execute the following command to create the folder .ssh using SSH:
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C:\Users\user>ssh user@sshserver mkdir -p .ssh
user@sshserver's password:
now, because I’m using Windows, I just copy past the content of the generated file c:\users\user\id_rsa.pub to the remote file ~/.ssh/autorized_keys
If you’re using Linux as a client, you have just to use the awesome command cat to “copy/past” from command line:
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user@sshclient:~> cat .ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh user@sshserver 'cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys'
user@sshserver's password:
now, if all is fine, when you try to connect from SSH command line, you’ll not be asked for the password anymore:
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C:\Users\user>ssh user@sshserver
Welcome to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (GNU/Linux 5.4.0-37-generic x86_64)
Last login: Mon Jun 15 07:29:16 2020 from 192.168.1.10
user@sshserver:~$
That’s all!