Secure Login

Logging in to a remote server via secure shell is safe and effective. Using public and private keys eliminates the need to type in a password every time you connect to the remote server. This makes such work both more secure and more convenient.

Create the private and public keys

A simple unix command generates the keys, and the output also includes a key fingerprint and an ascii "randomart" image (Neither is included here for security reasons.) I left the passphrase empty. (It prompts twice for it.)

cd ~/.ssh
ssh-keygen -t dsa

Put the public key on the remote server

At this point, I have created a private (~/.ssh/id_dsa) and public (~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub) key. I want to copy the public key to the remote server.

ssh user@www.istarelworkshop.com
mkdir .ssh && cd .ssh
vi authorized_keys

Paste the contents of the local public key into ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the remote server. Note: if the .ssh directory already exists on the remote server, you may only need to append the contents of ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys.