RSA Authentication: Cannot get passwordless login with SSH

rsassh

I have set up my computer to do the public/private authentication with a remote server, but somehow it is not working today.

I have done the ssh key-gen -t rsa, then scp'd it to the remote.

I can scp without a password (using the pub/priv key), but whenever I try to SSH, it requests the password.

What can I do to authenticate on the key alone?

Best Answer

You should check if you have (sshd_config) :

RSAAuthentication yes
PubkeyAuthentication yes
AuthorizedKeysFile      %h/.ssh/authorized_keys

UsePAM yes  <-- That one is usually the last line of the sshd_config

Then that your public key is added to authorized_keys in your ~/.ssh/. The last one (UsePAM yes) is very important, since if disabled it will force you to authenticate with your unix account. PAM is here to say that private key authentication is sufficient to log in. Eventually, if that still don't resolves you may have to check the PAM configuration.

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SSH Key-based authentication fails

I've seen this happen when the user's home directory isn't local, but on an NFS automount on the network. If your home directory isn't already mounted when sshd goes to look for your ~/.ssh/authorized_keys, it won't be able to access it in time, so public-key-based authentication will fail.

SSH RSA key with non-root user

You should be able to put the public key in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys or ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2 (mode 600) and have it work just like it does with the root account.

Execute these commands to correct permissions

chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2
chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
chmod 700 ~/.ssh

Best Answer

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SSH Key-based authentication fails

SSH RSA key with non-root user

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