How to set up SSH keys

Setting up SSH (Secure Shell) keys is an essential step for securely accessing remote servers without the need to enter a password each time. Here’s a short introduction on how to set up SSH keys.

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To securely access the kubeops master and worker machines, you need to create a ssh-key-pair (private and public key) on the admin machine. Afterwards copy the public key onto each machine.

Install SSH Client

Most Linux distributions come with an SSH client pre-installed. If its not installed, you can install it using your distributions package manager.

Important For installing new additional software you may need permissions (e.g. root or sudo).

For RHEL8 OS use following command.

sudo dnf install -y openssh-client

Generate SSH Keys

If you do not already have an SSH key or if you want to generate a new key pair specifically for this connection, follow these steps.

Run the command

ssh-keygen

Follow the prompts to choose a file location and passphrase (optional but recommended for added security).

Copy the Public Key to the Remote Machine

To avoid password prompts every time you connect, you can authorize your public key on the remote machine.

You can manually copy the public key to the servers authorized keys using the command ssh-copy-id.

ssh-copy-id <username>@<remote_host>

Replace <username>@<remote_host> with your actual username and the remote machine‘s IP address or hostname.

If ssh-copy-id is not available, you can use the following command:

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh username@remote_host "mkdir -p ~/.ssh && cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"

Additional Information

For more information about commands see the documentation of your respective operating system.

For ssh or ssh-keygen you can use the manual pages:

man ssh

man ssh-keygen