SSH key pair is a set of private/public keys used in securing network communication. These keys are normally required for passwordless SSH login to a remote host running SSH daemon (sshd). Here is how you would generate a pair of RSA keys:

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/nirbhay/.ssh/id_rsa):
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): 
Enter same passphrase again: 
Your identification has been saved in /home/nirbhay/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /home/nirbhay/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
5f:1a:b5:50:a8:b6:d6:2b:48:1b:b6:df:4c:54:a2:28 nirbhay@nirbhay-VirtualBox
The key's randomart image is:
+--[ RSA 2048]----+
|           ..    |
|          ..     |
|         .o o    |
...
|       .o. = .   |
|       ...o      |
+-----------------+
$ ls ~/.ssh/
id_rsa  id_rsa.pub

Now that we have the private/public key files, all you need to do is copy/append the public key (id_rsa.pub) contents to the remote machine’s ~/.ssh/authorized_keys (600) file. DO NOT share the “private key”.

Note: On debian-based distributions, ssh-keygen is provided by openssh-client package.