The private key can further be protected by a passphrase which you would have to enter, everytime you want to login to a remote server using that private key. The id_rsa part just signifies what encryption cipher is being used (in this case it happens to be RSA). pem extension signifies that that file is the public key that you can share with anyone. ssh directory has the authorized_keys, from your local device. Once that is done, you can ssh as that user on the server whose. Here you enter the contents of your public key as it is.

You then go to your remote server, login to a console as a regular or root user, open up the file ~/.ssh/authorized_keysof that server. These keys are usually stored on your local computer at a path ~/.ssh/id_rsa(private key) and ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pem(the public key).

Messages encrypted using Public key can be decrypted using the private key and vice versa. You create a pair of keys on your local computer. Here’s simplified model of how SSH works. Also we would need to discuss the network related settings of your VM to make sure you have access to that VM from anywhere in your LAN. Simply start your VM in a headless mode and SSH in and out of it without having multiple windows open in your terminal.įor those who are new to the idea of SSH, we will have a short introduction to the workings of SSH before diving into the setup. Having the capability to SSH into your Guest OS can come in handy when you don’t want to use the GUI of your Virtual Machine. Maybe, it’s just a server operating system running as a VM, where you test your applications before actually deploying them. There are times when you want to have a remote access to your VM.

Virtualbox host key change