No problem, I assume you’re on a Debian variant (openHABian etc):
1. Generate the key
Start by generating the private and public key for the client you use to connect:
ssh-keygen
This will ask you a set of questions, and output a private and a public key file (by default this is /home/<username>/.ssh/id_rsa.pub where <username> is probably openhabian.
2. Copy the public key
Read in the public key string and copy it, for example if you use the command:
cat /home/<username>/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
You get the output:
ssh-rsa AAAABcdefghAAAA <username>@<server>
copy all of the AAAABcdefghAAAA bit as we’ll use that later.
3. Use the copied key in the Karaf keylist.
Simply edit ${OPENHAB_USERDATA}/etc/keys.properties to contain the following line above the _g_\admingroup line:
openhab=AAAABcdefghAAAA,_g_:admingroup
No need to restart openHAB.
4. Use the ssh client to connect to openHAB console
The command will be:
ssh -p 8101 openhab@localhost
and will not ask for a password. If you’re connecting externally, then replace localhost with the server address.
5. (Optional) use openhab-cli to connect to openHAB console
The command follows the same syntax that Karaf uses:
openhab-cli console -k <privatekey>
where <privatekey> is the private key generated in step 1.