Passwordless SSH

[Venkat_11]

I want to enable SSH root login between two servers with out asking for password. Can anybody tell me the process to enable passworless login by using SSH.

Thanks
Venkat

[Rajeev Shukla]

These are the steps you need to do on the source and destination server

1. Generate the key using ssh-keygen -t dsa
2. The above command will create a .ssh directory in the home directory of the user who runs the command (say root)
3. On the destination server create a directory called .ssh in the home directory of root
4. cd to ~root/.ssh directory on the source server and copy the content of id_dsa.pub file into the destination server in a file called authorized_keys
5. change the permission of the file authorized_keys to 640

I guess that should let you ssh without password

[Bejoy C Alias]

Remember that u should use a blank passphrase while creating the public/private key pair if u want to login to the second server without prompting for anything.

[Arunvijai_4]

Hi Venkat,

Here is a thread which contains method of doing it,

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=851253

-Arun

[Senthil Prabu.S_1]

Hi venkat,
plz find the attached doc which talks in brief about SSH passwordless authentication between two unix machines.


HTH,
Prabu.S

[Senthil Prabu.S_1]

Hi venkat,
Also check following my posts on this
topic.

links;
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=972682
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=972682

HTH,
Prabu.S

[Khashru]

please find the attach document.

[PeterWolfe]

Starting with 11.23 December 05, there
is a new tool called csshsetup, which helps
to automate the manual key distribution steps.
You can simply:
csshsetup remotehost
to do a one way key exhange (add your key to the
remote host). You can do:
csshsetup -r remotehost
to do a bidirectional or round-robin key exchange
in order to have passwordless ssh in either direction.
The -f option can be used to extend
this to additional hosts. For example, to set
up ssh keys across all the nodes of a Serviceguard cluster:
csshsetup -r -f
where memberlist contains the list of cluster members.
csshsetup will ask you for each remote system's password
one time in order to do the key exchange (using ssh itself).

[Alexander Skwar]

Instead of using a blank passphrase for your SSH key, you might want to consider using a SSH key agent. PuTTY and OpenSSH (and HP-UX Secure Shell, I assume) offer such a thing.

It basically works this way:
You start the key agent and load your SSH key into it. You're then asked ONCE for the passphrase of the ssh key. After that, if you connect to a host, the key agent will then present this "pre-authenticated" key and the system will let you login without asking you for an additional password. This only works if you're using SSH interactively, though.

To add a key to the OpenSSH keyagent, run "ssh-add". For PuTTY, double click on your .ppk file.

[Tvs]

Hi
sh-keygen -t dsa , generates SSH-2 DSA key pairs.Depending on which protocol and algorithm you use, securely copy or append the public keyfile (~/.ssh/identity.pub, ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub, or ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub) from the ssh-client system to the ssh-server system and name it ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. You can append the file using the cat command

regards

tvs

[Alexander Skwar]

BTW: There's also a "ssh-copyid" command which will copy the SSH key to the remote server and append it to authorized_keys.

[Venkat_11]

Thanks for the all the poeple who ever responded.