How to automatically log in to remote ssh servers using public/private keypair As a user: ~>ssh-keygen -t dsa and enter your way through the prompts The keys are stored in the .ssh/ directory in your home directory. -rw------- 1 pm users 668 2009-10-24 15:58 id_dsa -rw-r--r-- 1 pm users 601 2009-10-24 15:58 id_dsa.pub id_dsa.pub is the public keyfile we are gonna place on the remote server. ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub remoteserver Enter your password for the remote server. You should get: Now try logging into the machine, with "ssh 'remoteserver'", and check in:  .ssh/authorized_keys to make sure we haven't added extra keys that you weren't expecting. Now try it for yourself: ssh remoteserver Et voila!