Generating a pem file for auto login to ubuntu 14.04 server

Generate the key

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048 -v 

and when asked to enter file in which to save the key, type my-certificate and when asked to enter passphrase, press Enter (empty passphrase) and confirm by Enter.

This will generate my-certificate and my-certificate.pub files in the current folder

rename the my-certificate to my-certificate.pem

mv my-certificate my-certificate.pem

Upload the public certificate to to server:

ssh-copy-id -i ~/my-certificate.pub username@ip

this will ask you for the password to copy the public key file contents to /home/username/.ssh/authorized_keys

Test the connection

you can test the connection by running the command

sudo ssh -i my-certificate.pem username@ip

Replace the username and ip as per your configuration

References

• http://www.beginninglinux.com/home/server-administration/openssh-keys-certificates-authentication-pem-pub-crt