Creating and setting up SSH key based authentication for passwordless remote server logins on Linux or Mac OS X.

On the local server or workstation, logged in as, eg. myuser:

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mkdir ~/.ssh
cd ~/.ssh
ssh-keygen -t rsa

NOTE: When asked for file in wich to save the key, make sure the path reads something like /home/myuser/.ssh/. We want to save the new generated key-pair in the full path to above created .ssh folder. Also make sure not to specify a passphrase, otherwise, you will still have to input a password at logon. You can also choose to generate a DSA key-pair in place of the RSA key-pair.

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scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub remoteuser@remote-server:/home/remoteuser/id_rsa.local-server.pub

On the remote server, you wish to log into:

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mkdir ~/.ssh
chmod 700 ~/.ssh
cat /home/remoteuser/id_rsa.local-server.pub >> /home/remoteuser/.ssh/authorized_keys
chmod 644 /home/remoteuser/.ssh/authorized_keys

Now you can test from the local server or workstation if it works:

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ssh remoteuser@remote-server