Weyland.be

If I want to connect to my remote box from my iPhone, I don’t like very much to type “ssh user@remote.box.be” and then the password … it’s just too much!

Here’s how you use private and public keys and a very small script to connect … faster!

On your iPhone (thus via an SSH client, of via MobileTerminal) make sure you’re doing this as the “mobile” user:

iPhone3G:/bin root# su mobile
iPhone3G:/bin mobile$

Then type the following command:

iPhone3G:~/.ssh mobile$ ssh-keygen -r dsa

Now you have 2 new files in the .ssh directory:

iPhone3G:~/.ssh mobile$ ls -al
total 12
drwx------ 2 mobile mobile  170 Aug 25 21:30 .
drwxr-xr-x 7 mobile mobile  306 Aug 11 17:52 ..
-rw------- 1 mobile mobile  672 Aug 25 21:30 id_dsa
-rw-r--r-- 1 mobile mobile  605 Aug 25 21:30 id_dsa.pub
-rw-r--r-- 1 mobile mobile 1326 Aug 16 10:21 known_hosts

Use Winscp to copy the id_dsa.pub file to your remote box, and put it in your ~/.ssh directory, renaming it to authorized_keys. If you already have an authorized_keys file there, you’ll need to append the contents of id_dsa.pub to it, with:

selder@derelict:~/.ssh$ cat id_dsa.pub >> authorized_keys

Now, create a file with the name of your remote box (or a shortname) in the /bin directory on your iPhone:

iPhone3G:/bin mobile$ cat remote_box
#!/bin/sh
ssh user@remote.box.be

And make sure everyone can execute it:

iPhone3G:/bin mobile$ chmod 755 remote_box
iPhone3G:/bin mobile$ ls -al remote_box
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 41 Aug 25 22:11 remote_box*

Et voila! By typing “remote_box” in MobileTerminal on my iPhone I am immediately connected to my remote box, without typing the password!

Ah, maybe the most important part: just be very careful now … remember to remove the entry in the authorized_keys file on your remote box if your iPhone has been stolen or something … with that key someone else could have complete control over your box without having to type a password!

Thanks to _bs who explained me 10 years ago :)