Using SSH keys with Fabric

Fabric is a Python (2.5-2.7) library and command-line tool for streamlining the use of SSH for application deployment or systems administration tasks. Using SSH keys with Fabric is almost mandatory if convenience is a priority. By using the SSH key you will get a secure and KISSable script, by removing the necessity of password prompts.

SSH Key

The first thing we have to do is to generate our SSH key. Open up terminal, and type in:

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096

This will generate a SSH key by using the RSA algorithm. After hitting [enter], the terminal will present you with a series of prompts. Just keep hitting [enter] to use their default values.

The newly generated key should now be stored as:

~/.ssh/id_rsa		# our private key
~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub	# our public key

Distribute the public key

The public key’s content must be added to the authorized_keys file on the remote server. Connect to your remote server and verify that the directory structure ~/.ssh/authorized_keys exists on your server. If this is not the case, simply create it with:

$ mkdir ~/.ssh && touch ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Next up, you paste the content of the generated ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub into the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file on your server.