Ok I've gotten around to messing with this again. And I have several questions.. ssh-copy-id What do I do with this command? The Ubuntu wiki says "Assuming the remote Ubuntu computers you wish to use the keys for have running ssh daemons already, then locating your public portion of the key pair on those machines is quite simple. For example, if you'd like to begin using key-based logins as user username on a remote machine named host, and host is running sshd, and reachable by name on your network, simply use the ssh-copy-id command to properly locate your key: ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub username@host" So username@host would be something like root@N800. Correct? But from where do I issue the command? My desktop/laptop (clients) or my tablet? (host?). And does this copy the ID onto whatever computer I need it on? @danramos, I tried following your instructions though I didn't want to set an IP address. I'm going leave my desktop at home this year, and just bring my laptop with me to college so I'd need the ability to connect to it from my desktop or laptop depending on which network I am on. (at home, desktop. at college, my laptop). And if I'm already logging into root via ssh, how would I switch it to the more secure key+ password? And how would this effect programs such as winscp or the Ubuntu Nautilus file manager?