It is possible to automatically login in a ssh session on a remote system, without entering a password. Also copying files with scp without password is possible. To make this possible a public ssh key needs to be exchanged between the source and the target system. On the source system an ssh key pair is generated. The public key is transferred to the target system and will be used to validate the login attempt that is signed with the private key.

The next commands should be performed by the user that wants to ssh/scp to the target system. Steps below assume that this is the root user, but this could also be www-data, etc. As user on the source system, use ssh-keygen to generate a public/private key pair.As a password, you would type nothing (just enter). This will save the public key in /root/.ssh/id_rsa.pub and the private key in /root/.ssh/id_rsa, if you don't specify another location.

# cd /root/.ssh
# ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048
---------------------------------------------------
# Generating public/private rsa key pair.
  Enter file in which to save the key (/root/.ssh/id_rsa): 
  Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): 
  Enter same passphrase again: 
  Your identification has been saved in /root/.ssh/id_rsa.
  Your public key has been saved in /root/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.

To allow the user on the source system to ssh to the target system, you need to place the users public key into authorized list of the user on the target system. There are 2 different ways to achieve this:

• Manual
• With 'ssh-copy-id'

The public key of the user on the source system should be included into the /.ssh/authorized_keys file of the target user on the target system. The examples below assume that both source and target users are root.

Append the public key to root's /root/.ssh/authorized_keys file on the target. On the target system do the following commands:

 # cd /user_src/.ssh
 # scp user_target@192.168.xx.xx:/home/user_target/.ssh/id_rsa.pub  client_id_rsa.pub
 # touch ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
 # cat client_id_rsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
 # rm client_id_rsa.pub

Copy your keys to the target system:

$ ssh-copy-id -i id_rsa.pub root@targetsystem

remoteusername@targetsystem's password: 

Now try logging into the machine, with ssh 'remoteusername@targetsystem'. The key of your system should now be place in to the .ssh subdirectory in the home directory of remoteusername on the target system.

  /home/remoteusername/.ssh/authorized_keys
or 
  /root/.ssh/authorized_keys

When you for the first time ssh/scp into a remote host, you will get the following question:

The authenticity of host '192.168.178.xx (192.168.178.xx3)' can't be established.
ED25519 key fingerprint is SHA256:YPWYwafZkmwT8K+tYX0sHzcYhzFDK7DaewTPR2JvA8.
This key is not known by any other names.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])?

When accepted this key is placed into the client's ~/.ssh/known_hosts file. In subsequent ssh/scp sessions this host is known and this warning will not be shown. For unattended ssh/scp this initial exchange should have been performed. You can do it manually at setup (with ssh into the target).

Or you can place the target public key into the ~/.ssh/known_hosts file, you need to do this (make sure ~/.ssh/target_id_rsa.pub is the client's public key, which needs to be copied from the target system):

$ scp root@192.168.xx.xx:/root/.ssh/id_rsa.pub target-key.pub
$ touch ~/.ssh/known_hosts
$ cat ~/.ssh/target-key.pub >> ~/.ssh/known_hosts
$ rm target-key.pub

Or symply try to ssh from client to target as root. The key will be placed automatically in known_hosts file.

This might not be necessary if the client key has already be created for other targets, so you can reuse it. Repeat the above steps for the user 'oscar' on the client that will execute the ssh. Login as user on the client and perform the following steps:

$ cd /home/oscar/.ssh
$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048
---------------------------------------------------
# Generating public/private rsa key pair.
  Enter file in which to save the key (/home/oscar/.ssh/id_rsa): 
  Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): 
  Enter same passphrase again: 
  Your identification has been saved in /home/oscar/.ssh/id_rsa.
  Your public key has been saved in /home/oscar/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.

After this the file ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub should exist in the .ssh in the home directory of user 'oscar'. Make a copy of the public key to make it recognizable.

This should now work from the server to the client:

  $ ssh root@192.168.xx.xx

If everything went ok, you should be logged in directly without a password prompt.