Secure shell (i.e., ssh) normally prompts you for an ID and password when you login, however, it's possible to “sidestep” this process using a public/private key pair for authentication. This is particularly convenient when using some other protocol (e.g., SVN, Git) on top of SSH. To take advantage of this feature you must first create such a pair and then provide the server with your public key.

You may already have a key-pair (that was created for some other purpose). If so, you should use it.

To check, open a command shell and navigate to your home directory (e.g., \users\username in MS-Windows, ~ in Unix/Linux and OS X) and see if you have a directory/folder named .ssh (note the period). If you do, it will contain the files id_rsa (your private key) and id_rsa.pub (your public key).

If you have these files then you do not need to create a key-pair.

You can create a key-pair using the ssh-keygen utility from the command shell. (In versions of MS-Windows prior to 10 you will need to use the PuTTY Key Generator or the MSYS/MINGW shell, both of which are available for free.)

To do so, enter the command:

ssh-keygen -C "Generated YYMMDD"

where YYMMDD is the date. (Note: The -C flag simply inserts a comment that is useful when trying to identify key pairs.) By default, ssh-keygen will generate a key with 2048 bits. This can be changed using the -b flag.

Then press Enter in response to the prompts (unless you want to change the directory/folder where the keys will be stored and/or want to further protect your private key with a passphrase).

This will create two files, one named id_rsa (your private key) and one named id_rsa.pub (your public key). As the name implies, you should not give your private key to anyone, but you can give your public key to anyone without risk.

On Linux servers, a user's public keys are stored in the file ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. If you have ssh-copy-id on your computer, you can use it to upload your public key to a Linux server (e.g., stu.cs.jmu.edu and append it to this file. If not, you will need to upload the file manually (e.g., using SCP) and then append it to this file as follows:

cat id_rsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

If the ~/.ssh directory does not exist you can create it. SSH has strict permission requirements on these files:

mkdir ~/.ssh
chmod 700 ~/.ssh
touch ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

At this point, you should be able to use SSH (either directly or indirectly) to login to the Linux server without providing an ID and/or password.

Below is an example ssh config file that on linux and mac would be located at ~/.ssh/config

Host *
	ServerAliveInterval 30
	ServerAliveCountMax 120
	AddKeysToAgent yes # https://man.openbsd.org/ssh_config#AddKeysToAgent
	IdentitiesOnly yes
Host github.com
       IdentityFile /Users/tgm/.ssh/githubta
Host stu
	HostName stu.cs.jmu.edu
	# next setting only necessary if you aren't using a default-named key like id_rsa or id_ed25519
        # IdentityFile ~/.ssh/fac.cs.jmu.edu
	User stewarmc # if you specify a user, you don't have to put the user@ when connecting via ssh
Host aplaceicantreachdirectly
        HostName internalonly.cs.jmu.edu
        ProxyJump stu
        ## some ssh servers may be listenign on a non-standard port. (the standard is 22)
        # Port 23 # is typically for telnet, but people can do what they want with their servers 

Test the github one: ssh -T git@github.com