Easier Passwordless SSH with ssh-copy-id

You may be familiar with the many steps involved in setting up Passwordless SSH for an Oracle cluster but there is a utility that simplifies the process considerably: ssh-copy-id.

First generate the public and private keys using ssh-keygen as usual:

oracle@dbserver-1$ ssh-keygen
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/oracle/.ssh/id_rsa):[Enter key]
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): [Press enter key]
Enter same passphrase again: [Press enter key]
Your identification has been saved in /home/oracle/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /home/oracle/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
33:b3:fe:af:95:95:18:11:31:d5:de:96:2f:f2:35:f9 oracle@dbserver-1

After that you can append the key values and set the proper permissions easily using ssh-copy-id:

oracle@dbserver-1$ ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub dbserver-2
oracle@dbserver-2's password:
Now try logging into the machine, with "ssh 'dbserver-2'", and check in:

.ssh/authorized_keys

to make sure we haven't added extra keys that you weren't expecting.

Now you are able to ssh into the remote server without a password:

oracle@dbserver-1$ ssh dbserver-2
Last login: Fri Aug 16 14:27:56 PDT 2013 from 192.168.1.2

oracle@dbserver-2$