Using ssh without a password

The situation discussed here is that in which there are two different computers, called fromPC and toPC and there are two users, say, pablo@fromPC and echenique@toPC. (Of course, this trivially includes the case in which both users are called the same.)

Now, we want to ssh from pablo@fromPC to echenique@toPC without having to type echenique‘s password each time.

So, first, we log as pablo in fromPC and issue the command

ssh-keygen -t rsa

This creates a file called id_rsa.pub in the .ssh/ subdirectory of pablo‘s home. Inside this file, there is a line full of letters and numbers. In my case, it reads

ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAZAABIwAAAIEAtOryp8y1S2S
Q6OAiHTRcq7SClWt4fYuJMrl+9+lTmZghxGnBn2GHZVR9ct
NcXpx7eSRLf4sSS2ZBGZd3AjWSp+WQXpcmgM4tlm7uvhsL2
LYaE90l/r9tUuBvu6JBZp8gi1HazkwZCOussYfx395JHDE8
MwCjaajjaMxTX2pZ2z0= pablo@fromPC

(kind of lying  )

Next, we log as echenique in toPC and look for a file called authorized_keys in the .ssh/ subdirectory of echenique‘s home. If it does not exist, we create it and paste the above weird line into it, if it already exists, we add the line at the end. We save the file et voilà.

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