Generating an RSA Key Pair for Version 1.3 and 1.5

Use the following steps to generate an RSA key pair, which is used by version 1 of the SSH Protocol. If you are only connecting between systems that use DSA, you do not need an RSA version 1.3 or RSA version 1.5 key pair.

To generate an RSA (for version 1.3 and 1.5 protocol) key pair, type the following command at a shell prompt:

ssh-keygen -t rsa1

Accept the default file location (~/.ssh/identity). Enter a passphrase different from your account password. Confirm the passphrase by entering it again.

The public key is written to ~/.ssh/identity.pub. The private key is written to ~/.ssh/identity. Do not give anyone the private key.

Change the permissions of your .ssh directory and your key with the commands chmod 755 ~/.ssh and chmod 644 ~/.ssh/identity.pub.
Copy the contents of ~/.ssh/identity.pub into the file ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the machine to which you wish to connect. If the file ~/.ssh/authorized_keys does not exist, you can copy the file ~/.ssh/identity.pub to the file ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the remote machine.
If you are running GNOME, skip to "Configuring ssh-agent with a GUI". If you are not running GNOME, skip to "Configuring ssh-agent".