Using SSH without a password

[Logan Kennelly]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Tuesday 09 July 2002 02:00 pm, Simper, Brian D wrote:
> Is it possible to set up a Linux machine to use scp without using a
> password?  I have a server that needs to provide files for a set of very
> secure systems and they only have ssh installed on them (no ftp, no
> telnet, no rlogin clients or servers).  For convenience of the users, can
> a password-less scp be set up?

Others pointed out that you can use public/private key authentication.  More 
specifically:

Host: `ssh-keygen -t rsa`
   Accept the defaults.  Don't specify a passphrase.

Host: `scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub user@server:id_rsa.pub`
Server: `cat ~/id_rsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2`
Server: `rm ~/id_rsa.pub` (just to cleanup)

(If you want to be really clean, run from the host:
  `cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh user@server 'cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2'`
  instead of the previous three commands.)

Note that you need to `chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2` so that others 
cannot read the file.  (This one stumped me for the longest time until I 
read the server logs. :-) )

- -- 
						Logan Kennelly
      ,,,
     (. .)
- --ooO-(_)-Ooo--
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org

iD8DBQE9K3uwpNoctRtUIRQRAnnjAJ9sNoF0hXdy3jGLEu8aRWyZ+t7qawCeO4ul
yrnFBc2/Nojkc46nuy0HY4Q=
=pxuR
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----