In this post I’ll explain how to setup ssh keys on a Mac so you no longer have to enter a password when connecting to a remote machine using ssh.
If you don’t have homebrew installed consider doing so now. To quote the authors: “It’s the missing package manager for OSX”. Whilst not entirely necessary it will allow us to easily install the prerequisites.
Install ssh-copy-id
which allows us to upload the public key to the remote more easily.
brew install ssh-copy-id
Create the public and private key pair file locally providing an optional password. This will get stored under ~/.ssh. Specifying a filename is optional.
ssh-keygen
Now we need to put the public key on the remote server. The tool we installed in step 1 will allow us to easily do this.
ssh-copy-id user@serverip-or-name
That’s it! ssh
onto the machine using the user you specified in step 3 and if all went well you’ll connect without having to provide a password.