// Text excerpt about setting up a comfortable, key-based user login // consumer postinstallation-tasks.adoc (main), hetzner-dc.adoc // An SSH key file saves the otherwise annoying and error‑prone typing of the hopefully secure and sufficiently long password. Additionally, you may prepare your local desktop to use a short name instead of having to type in a complete FQN hostname. a. On your desktop (Linux or macOS), create an SSH keyfile if not already available. It should not be secured by password to enable automatic processing. + [source,] ---- […]# mkdir ~/.ssh […]# cd ~/.ssh […]# ssh-keygen -b 4096 -C "@example.com" -f id_ ---- b. Transfer the key file to your server. + [source,] ---- […]$ ssh-copy-id -i $outputkeyfile.pub @host.example.com ---- c. Create a config file on your desktop with a convenient host name for your server. + [source,] ---- […]$ vi ~/.ssh/config Host Hostname host.example.com User ProxyCommand none ForwardAgent no ForwardX11 no Port 22 KeepAlive yes IdentityFile ~/.ssh/$outputkeyfile ---- d. Test the configuration + [source,] ---- […]$ ssh ----