Generate PEM file for any Linux user

Quickly and easily generate a key pair for passwordless connection. Also works perfect as git deploy keys!

#Generate the keys

DO NOT DO THIS AS ROOT

Run the command to generate the keys

$ ssh-keygen -P "" -t rsa -b 4096 -m pem -f my-key-pair

• -b flag sets the bits, 4096 is recommended
• -m pem is needed to generate a file in RSA Private Key format, not in OpenSSH Private Key format
• -f specifies the output key pair
• replace my-key-pair with the name of your key pair (preferably deploy_key or access_key)

This will generate two files:

• my-key-pair - this is your PEM file, copy paste the contents
• my-key-pair.pub - this is the corresponding public key file

Note: You may want to rename the my-key-pair to my-key-pair.pem for convenience.

#Set the key to allow login

In order to be able to log in using the generated PEM file, you should add the public key to the authorized_keys list. To do that, run

# Ignore this step if you have other public keys added
$ touch ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

$ cat my-key-pair.pem >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys