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How do I associate an ssh public key with a user account on the machine I connect to, so I don't have to type in the account password every time I make an ssh connection to that machine?
The machine being connected to is an older mini with Leopard installed. I assume that this is doable in Leopard, and I don't have to upgrade to Snow Leopard or Lion.
First, you create a public and private key (if you haven't done so already) on the machine from which you want to login:
ssh-keygen -t dsa
You only need to do this if there isn't already a ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub file.
On Linux, there's the ssh-copy-id helper. On Mac, you need to copy the public key by hand:
Copy the generated public key to the target machine:
scp ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub user@targetmachine:myPublicKey.pub
Login to the target machine:
ssh user@targetmachine
Append the public key to the authorized keys:
cat myPublicKey.pub >>.ssh/authorized_keys
You can now delete the copied key:
rm myPublicKey.pub
Done. You should now be able to login to your target machine without the need to enter a password.
scp ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub user@remotehost:~/.ssh/authorized_keys
Aug 15, 2011 at 20:02
ssh user@targetmachine 'cat >>~/.ssh/authorized_keys' <~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub But I think the step-by-step solution in my answer is easier to understand.
You should have an id_dsa.public file in your ~/.ssh folder.
Just copy that file over to the server, into ~/.ssh folder and append its contents to the authorized_keys file.
Your next login should be automatic. It can be that you're asked about the password you used to created the private key, but there's an option to store that password into your keychain.
