How to automatically ssh to another machine on boot/login?

[wilburpan]

I figured out how to use ftp to connect to my home machine from my laptop so that whenever I startup and login to my laptop, it automatically ftp's to my home computer and downloads some files that I would like to keep synchronized between the two computers. I was congratulating myself on being very clever until I found out what a huge security risk this is, since my username and password are sent out over the internet unencrypted. It looks like I should use ssh for this, and I am able to ssh manually to my home computer, but I would like to make this an automatic process as well. I've gone through the manuals, but just can't seem to figure this out.

I don't think I need a step-by-step guide, but any pointers on how to get this going would be greatly appreciated.

[ben]

Well, you could wrtie a script that start automatically on boot (say in /etc/init.s/local) that do:
scp you@yourhost.yourdomain.com/path/to/yourfiles path/to/whereyouwantthem.

For it to work without intervention, you should exchange the rsa or dsa key once and for all

see man sshd

HTH

Ben

[wilburpan]

Thanks for the tip. scp is what I was looking for, but didn't know it at the time.

[puggy]