Franks at 19:30, 13 December 2005

2005-12-13T19:30:26Z

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I choose to generate RSA over DSA keys, and I choose 2048 bits instead of the default 1024. Read the [[Manual]] for more options.

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/yashy/.ssh/id_rsa):
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in /home/yashy/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /home/yashy/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
8f:31:0a:4f:0d:35:87:2b:b8:7b:95:6b:f4:c0:3a:3b yashy@help

Being aware of the security risks, I just enter [Enter] both times it asked me to enter a passphrase, I now I have no passphrase on this key. Once this was completed, I did:

$ cat /home/yashy/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABromanEA6My5JCmMJX0EoaHX9R7ZE5KQZ7dKxdfirsttQaUx5wMlnweF6MLWbU2tzJ1aZMr8jyL7e+empireB52ZKNDhs1amr8X6+e/L9UQX8OKKzcZyUj8rO8QTdw+vsgk8IQbiMO1GYYWVHw9HO0lYUmZTWFGTe0rSRu/mSRuNpsoVO80nWNbnP0wUa0YrGPyPMIoyIpo/BKUpSjHUSLUiC7KuSsDmVxMFuanvYsx79yx0KjRmXn73AdbH+VzSdlhC/5GIFnqbY2eZ6PeNmhAAspya62Wsc4caSrdE85Kp/TMwUZB4yF90VBG7mJjL+HZSIiO5irIM2HXDZaMVZe+iS5DoboEYaiA7DJuatR9KZ8+JeQ== yashy@help

Now I take that one really long line and copy it, and paste it into the remote host as a file called /home/yashy/.ssh/authorized_keys. Once I've done that, I can now ssh to the remote host doing a key exchange instead of entering a password. Unless you're aware of the risks, you're a lot safer to have entered a password during the key generation process. Enjoy!

Ssh-keygen - Revision history

Franks at 19:30, 13 December 2005