Login to remote server with private key

1. Generate private/public keys
   ssh-keygen -t rsa

2. Upload the public key (id_rsa.pub) to remote server
   scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub howard@remoteServer:~/.ssh/
   or
   cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh howard@remoteServer "cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys" 

3. Login to remote server and append the key
   ssh howard@remoteServer
   mkdir .ssh
   chmod 700 .ssh
   cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
   chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
   rm -rf id_rsa.pub

4. It's done!



To convert RSA private key to pem file, run the command below:
openssl rsa -in ~/.ssh/id_rsa -outform pem > id_rsa.pem