SSH create keys

SSH Public & Private key generation

RSA and DSA keys are deprecated and may not be supported on all Mac and Linux versions.

bbThe recommendation at time of writing is to use ecdsa 521[sic] for a balance between security and compatibility

#create public and private key pair

ssh-keygen -f key-filename -t ecdsa -b 521

#copy the public key to the $home/.ssh directory of the remote server

scp key-filename.pub host.contoso.com:~/.ssh/.

#The public key must be added to the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file on the remote host

user@host.contoso.com$ ssh-copy-id -i key-filename.pub user@host.contoso.com

## As an alternative to ssh-copy-id the key can be appended to the authorized_keys file

cat key-filename.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Key File Permissions

700  drwx------ ~/.ssh : SSH-Folder

644  -rw-r----- ~/.ssh/key-filename.pub : public key

600 -rw------- ~/.ssh/key-filename : private key

755 drwxr-xr-x ~/ : home folder (at most)