Associating ssh public key with user account
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 &gt;&gt;.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.