9 SSH Quick-Start Guide

  1. If you do not wish to type your password in every time you use ssh(1), and you use RSA or DSA keys to authenticate, ssh-agent(1) is there for your convenience. If you want to use ssh-agent(1), make sure that you run it before running other applications. X users, for example, usually do this from their .xsession or .xinitrc file. See ssh-agent(1) for details.

  2. Generate a key pair using ssh-keygen(1). The key pair will wind up in your $HOME/.ssh/ directory.

  3. Send your public key ($HOME/.ssh/id_dsa.pub or $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa.pub) to the person setting you up as a committer so it can be put into the yourlogin file in /etc/ssh-keys/ on freefall.

Now you should be able to use ssh-add(1) for authentication once per session. This will prompt you for your private key's pass phrase, and then store it in your authentication agent (ssh-agent(1)). If you no longer wish to have your key stored in the agent, issuing ssh-add -d will remove it.

Test by doing something such as ssh freefall.FreeBSD.org ls /usr.

For more information, see security/openssh, ssh(1), ssh-add(1), ssh-agent(1), ssh-keygen(1), and scp(1).