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Hulk
Asked: 2010-06-01 02:58:38 +0800 CST

ssh-keygen works for root only?

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Does ssh-keygen -t rsa work if only set for root user

i.e, if the username on local system is sodium and i generate the key using the above said command and on the remote system if i place the key in /root/.ssh authorized_keys ,this works.

But on the remote system if the key is placed in /home/natrium/.ssh authorized_keys

This still prompts for a password.Is this the expected behavior or is that some thing wrong in the above procedure

Thanks..

linux ssh

4 Answers

  1. Check permissions on the remote system:

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

    There is a tool that could be installed in your dist (ubuntu/debian has it) called: ssh-copy-id which will do this for you:

    $ ssh-copy-id <remote>

    If that doesn't work try ssh with option "-v" to see more verbose messages.

    Long version:

    #From client to server
client$ scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub remote_server.org:

# next, setup the public key on server
server$ mkdir ~/.ssh
server$ chmod 700 ~/.ssh
server$ cat ~/id_rsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
server$ chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
server$ rm ~/id_rsa.pub
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  2. Check permissions from ~sodium/.ssh/authorized_keys all the way to /. If any of these are world writable ssh keys won't be trusted.

    Run ssh-keygen as the user for whom you need the key. It should be run on the system to which you will be connecting.

    ssh-copy-id will copy ids from the target machine to the machine on which you wish to use the key.

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  3. Try this:

    ssh -v [email protected]

    May be you are trying to login to remote4 system as sodium, but you installed key for natrium.

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  4. Where you generate the keys doesn't matter, where you store them does.

    If you want to SSH from one machine to another, then the private key needs to be in the .ssh folder in the account you are SSHing from as id_rsa, and the public key must be in the .ssh/authorized_keys file in the account you are SSHing to. The keys are for users, not for machines. So the accounts you install them into make a very big difference.

    Something else to bear in mind is the version of SSH you are using, as I understand it, for SSH2 the keys should be in .ssh/authorized_keys2.

    Finally, to really see what's going on, best to follow Lexsys's instructions and ssh in verbose mode with the -v flag.

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