OpenSSH Speed Tips and Tricks

Although using public key authentication instead of passwords is a great method for increasing the security of SSH transfers, transferring SSH identity keys can be a royal pain. First, you create your key pairs; then, you copy the public key into the correct locations on all the machines you want to log into. The keys must be in a particular format, and you must go into the correct directory with the correct permissions.

Fortunately, ssh-copy-id, a slick utility included with OpenSSH, makes it easy.