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<h1>How to use Authorized Keys to Create a Passwordless SSH Connection</h1>
<p class="posted text-light">1st February 2012</p>
<p>If you're accessing Linux servers or automating tasks between servers, rather than having to enter your user password every time, you can also use SSH public key authentication. This is a simple process that involves creating a local key and storing it within the <em>authorized_keys</em> file on the remote server.</p>
<ol>
<li>Check if you already have a SSH key.
<code>$ ssh-add -L</code></li>
<li>If you don't have one, create one.
<code>$ ssh-keygen</code></li>
<li>Upload the key onto the server. Replace <em>myserver</em> with the hostname or IP address of your remote server.
<code>$ ssh-copy-id myserver</code></li>
</ol>
<p>If you're using Mac OS X and you don't have ssh-copy-id installed, download and install <a href="http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew" title="Homebrew">Homebrew</a> and run the <code>brew install ssh-copy-id</code> command.</p>
<p>If successful, you should now see a message like:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Now try logging into the machine, with "ssh 'myserver'", and check in:</p>
<p>~/.ssh/authorized_keys</p>
<p>to make sure we haven't added extra keys that you weren't expecting.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Now the next time that you SSH onto the server, it should log you in without prompting you for your password.</p>
<p class="tags">
Tags:
<a href="https://www.oliverdavies.uk/blog/tags/linux">linux</a>, <a href="https://www.oliverdavies.uk/blog/tags/ssh">ssh</a> </p>
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<p>Oliver Davies is a Web Developer, System Administrator and Drupal specialist based in the UK. He is a Senior Developer at <a href="https://microserve.io">Microserve</a> and also provides freelance consultancy services for Drupal websites, PHP applications and Linux servers.</p>
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