You will need to create a public/private key as the Jenkins user on your Jenkins server, then copy the public key to the user you want to do the deployment with on your target server.
Step 1, generate public and private key on build server as user jenkins
build1:~ jenkins$ whoami
jenkins
build1:~ jenkins$ ssh-keygen
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/var/lib/jenkins/.ssh/id_rsa):
Created directory '/var/lib/jenkins/.ssh'.
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in /var/lib/jenkins/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /var/lib/jenkins/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
[...]
The key's randomart image is:
[...]
build1:~ jenkins$ ls -l .ssh
total 2
-rw------- 1 jenkins jenkins 1679 Feb 28 11:55 id_rsa
-rw-r--r-- 1 jenkins jenkins 411 Feb 28 11:55 id_rsa.pub
build1:~ jenkins$ cat .ssh/id_rsa.pub
ssh-rsa AAAlskdjfalskdfjaslkdjf... [email protected]
Step 2, paste the pub file contents onto the target server.
target:~ bob$ cd .ssh
target:~ bob$ vi authorized_keys (paste in the stuff which was output above.)
Make sure your .ssh dir has permissoins 700 and your authorized_keys file has permissions 644
Step 3, configure Jenkins