Type the following command at the prompt then press enter.

When prompted for the file in which to save the key, press enter. The default location will be created.

Keep default values and no need for a pass phrase.

Congratulations! You now have an SSH key. The whole process will look like this:

What does all this mean?

The key generating process has created two files.

id_rsa (this is your private key, do not lose or give this to anybody!)

id_rsa.pub (this is your public key, you copy this to servers or give to others to place onto servers for you to authenticate against using your private key)

These keys are store by default in:

The path might be different but you will always see it when generating the SSH Key, and, it may actually display as below depending on whether your system displays file extensions or not:

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