SSH Without A Password
Categories: Information Technology, System Administration, UNIXPosted on Thursday, June 15, 2006 by Jon Emmons
Zach has posted a good quick reference for setting up SSH to use a shared key for authentication instead of a password on a UNIX system. It’s important to keep your keys secure, but this can allow you to set up scripts to execute commands or move files between multiple hosts without prompting for passwords.
If memory serves this type of authentication is enabled by default on most ssh servers, but if it doesn’t work talk to your sys-admin to see if it is disabled.
June 16th, 2006 at 8:31 am
Your link is a little screwy there.
June 16th, 2006 at 9:12 am
A little? I guess that’s what happens when you forget to close quotes in a link.
Link fixed. Sorry everyone.
June 17th, 2006 at 12:50 am
I’d be surprised to find key authentication disabled as it’s more secure than password authentication. If anything, I would expect password auth to be disabled - in fact, I’ve done this on my home server to help deter script kiddies from doing password attacks.
June 18th, 2006 at 5:55 pm
Good point Marc. Now that you mention it, some of the information we send between colleges is done over SSH where passwords are disabled.
November 14th, 2006 at 6:02 am
you can connect the through ssh w/o entering password using ssh-key gen and copy the public key into the other servers.
regards …nikunj..system Engineer-UNIX…India.
November 14th, 2006 at 8:26 am
Nikunj,
That is exactly what Zach’s article shows with full details on what the file should be named etc.