Most systems already have an .ssh folder in everyone's home directory, assuming that ssh has been used before. Generating a key can be done exactly how te book outlines it:

ssh-keygen -t dsa

But copying the public key to the remote system can be done in a single, simple step

cat ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub | ssh remoteuser@remotehost 'cat - >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys'

By sending id_dsa.pub to STDOUT on the local machine and piping it to the STDIN of the remote ssh command to be run, 'cat -' (cat STDIN) can be using to pickup this data off the pipe, and send it out to authorized_keys on the remote system.

If you want to maintain the paranoia that the book does with regard to the file and directory permissions, use

ssh remoteuser@remotehost 'chmod 700 ~/.ssh ; chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys'