The first thing we will do is generate a key for the SHH version 1 protocol (just in case you are connecting to an older machine):

ssh-keygen -t rsa1

SSH-Keygen will respond with something like the following:

Generating public/private rsa1 key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/Users/daz/.ssh/identity):

At this point hit enter then you will be prompted for a passphrase - this is a form of password that will be used to generate your unique keys and can contain any set of characters and spaces - something like "I’m really liking all of this geeky nonsense!" is a perfectly acceptable passphrase - just whatever you do, don’t use an empty passphrase. After entering (and confirming) your passphrase you will get the following output:

Your identification has been saved in /Users/daz/.ssh/identity.
Your public key has been saved in /Users/daz/.ssh/identity.pub.

This means that our identity keys have been generated. Now we just need to create a pair of keys for the SSH2 protocol - you can use the same or different passphrases for these keys - it’s up to you…

ssh-keygen -t dsa

Then

ssh-keygen -t rsa

You should now have three sets of keys in your ~/.ssh directory, the ones with the .pub extension are your public keys (what we need to put on your other machines) and the others are your private keys - these must be kept safe!

So, let’s use scp to copy the files across:

scp ~/.ssh/*.pub daz@MyServer:/home/daz/

Then log into your server using ssh and issue the following commands:

cat identity.pub >>~/.ssh/authorized_keys
cat id_dsa.pub >>~/.ssh/authorized_keys
cat id_rsa.pub >>~/.ssh/authorized_keys
rm identity.pub id_dsa.pub id_rsa.pub

This populates the authorized_keys file on our server with the three public keys that we have just transferred and then removes them as they’re no longer needed here.

That’s everything done, now all we have to do is log out of our server, and then try and log back in via ssh - a password should no longer be required!¹

The default ls on OS X comes from BSD and compared to the GNU/Linux alternative is slightly lacking when it comes to comes to changing how things look - so what I like to do is replace it with the GNU ls available in MacPorts - this allows me to get a terminal setup like below:

To get this done is pretty simple, once you have MacPorts set up correctly (if you can type man port and get a manual page you’re ready), just run the following command:

sudo port install coreutils +with_default_names

This installs the ‘GNU File, Shell, and Text utilities’ which ls is part of - the extra option at the end +with_default_names makes it override (only override - not replace, this is totally removable) the default ls and other tools otherwise they will have a ‘g’ prefix - i.e. ls would be gls.

Next we add some extra configuration to our ~/.bash_profile file (i’ll include my MacPorts config in case you get stuck above)…

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# MacPorts
export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH
export MANPATH=/opt/local/share/man:$MANPATH
 
# Terminal colours (after installing GNU coreutils)
NM="\[\033[0;38m\]" #means no background and white lines
HI="\[\033[0;37m\]" #change this for letter colors
HII="\[\033[0;31m\]" #change this for letter colors
SI="\[\033[0;33m\]" #this is for the current directory
IN="\[\033[0m\]"
 
export PS1="$NM[ $HI\u $HII\h $SI\w$NM ] $IN"
 
if [ "$TERM" != "dumb" ]; then
    export LS_OPTIONS='--color=auto'
    eval `dircolors ~/.dir_colors`
fi
 
# Useful aliases
alias ls='ls $LS_OPTIONS -hF'
alias ll='ls $LS_OPTIONS -lhF'
alias l='ls $LS_OPTIONS -lAhF'
alias cd..="cd .."
alias c="clear"
alias e="exit"
alias ssh="ssh -X"
alias ..="cd .."

Then finally we need to create a file called .dir_colors in our home directory that allows us to configure the colours used by ls:

touch ~/.dir_colors

Then add the contents of the file here:

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# Configuration file for dircolors, a utility to help you set the
# LS_COLORS environment variable used by GNU ls with the --color option.
 
# The keywords COLOR, OPTIONS, and EIGHTBIT (honored by the
# slackware version of dircolors) are recognized but ignored.
 
# Below, there should be one TERM entry for each termtype that is colorizable
TERM linux
TERM linux-c
TERM mach-color
TERM console
TERM con132x25
TERM con132x30
TERM con132x43
TERM con132x60
TERM con80x25
TERM con80x28
TERM con80x30
TERM con80x43
TERM con80x50
TERM con80x60
TERM xterm
TERM xterm-color
TERM xterm-debian
TERM rxvt
TERM screen
TERM screen-w
TERM vt100
 
# Below are the color init strings for the basic file types. A color init
# string consists of one or more of the following numeric codes:
# Attribute codes:
# 00=none 01=bold 04=underscore 05=blink 07=reverse 08=concealed
# Text color codes:
# 30=black 31=red 32=green 33=yellow 34=blue 35=magenta 36=cyan 37=white
# Background color codes:
# 40=black 41=red 42=green 43=yellow 44=blue 45=magenta 46=cyan 47=white
NORMAL 00	# global default, although everything should be something.
FILE 00 	# normal file
DIR 01;36 	# directory
LINK 01;37 	# symbolic link.  (If you set this to 'target' instead of a
           	# numerical value, the color is as for the file pointed to.)
FIFO 40;33	# pipe
SOCK 01;35	# socket
DOOR 01;35	# door
BLK 40;33;01	# block device driver
CHR 40;33;01 	# character device driver
ORPHAN 40;31;01 # symlink to nonexistent file
 
# This is for files with execute permission:
EXEC 01;35
 
# List any file extensions like '.gz' or '.tar' that you would like ls
# to colorize below. Put the extension, a space, and the color init string.
# (and any comments you want to add after a '#')
 
# If you use DOS-style suffixes, you may want to uncomment the following:
#.cmd 01;32 # executables (bright green)
#.exe 01;32
#.com 01;32
#.btm 01;32
#.bat 01;32
 
.tar 01;31 # archives or compressed (bright red)
.tgz 01;31
.arj 01;31
.taz 01;31
.lzh 01;31
.zip 01;31
.z   01;31
.Z   01;31
.gz  01;31
.bz2 01;31
.deb 01;31
.rpm 01;31
.jar 01;31
.dmg 01;31
 
# image formats
.jpg 01;35
.png 01;35
.gif 01;35
.bmp 01;35
.ppm 01;35
.tga 01;35
.xbm 01;35
.xpm 01;35
.tif 01;35
.png 01;35
.mpg 01;35
.avi 01;35
.fli 01;35
.gl 01;35
.dl 01;35
 
# source code files
.pl 00;33
.PL 00;33
.pm 00;33
.tt 00;33
.yml 00;33
.sql 00;33
.html 00;33
.css 00;33
.js 00;33

Finally, all you need to do is close and re-open the Terminal. Now we should be sorted.