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Ssh, passwordless authentication

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Sometimes, you need to be able to SSH into a remote machine for scripted maintenance purposes and not get challenged with a password. To do this, you need to set up key-based authentication between the user account you'll be using on your local computer, and the user account you'll be logging into on the remote computerHere's a quick and dirty how-to.
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On client machine
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  cd ~/.ssh
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  ssh-keygen -t rsa
  
Creating a public/private keyset with [[ssh-keygen]] on the computer and under the user account you want to log in FROM:
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Transfer <tt>id_rsa.pub</tt> to <tt>server:~/.ssh</tt>
  
ph34r# '''mkdir ~/.ssh'''
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On server machine
  ph34r# '''chmod 700 ~/.ssh'''
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  cd ~/.ssh
ph34r# '''cd ~/.ssh'''
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  cat id_rsa.pub >> authorized_keys
  ph34r# '''ssh-keygen -t rsa'''
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  rm id_rsa.pub
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
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Enter file in which to save the key ("your_local_home"/.ssh/id_rsa):
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Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
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Enter same passphrase again:
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Your identification has been saved in id_rsa.
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Your public key has been saved in id_rsa.pub.
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The key fingerprint is:
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17:5a:e7:77:ad:2c:0b:8e:f3:97:f8:20:53:79:69:55 root@ph34r
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Getting the public half of the key to the REMOTE computer and user account you want to log in TO:
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ph34r# '''scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub jimbo@l0ath1ng.tehinterweb.net:/home/jimbo/id_rsa.ph34r.pub'''
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ph34r# '''ssh jimbo@l0ath1ng.tehinterweb.net'''
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Password:
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% mkdir .ssh
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% chmod 700 .ssh
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% cat id_rsa.ph34r.pub >> .ssh/authorized_keys
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  % chmod 644 .ssh/authorized_keys
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Checking to make sure it worked:
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% '''exit'''
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ph34r# '''ssh jimbo@l0ath1ng.tehinterweb.net'''
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%
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Bingo.
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From here on out, whenever logged in as root on the computer ph34r, I will be able to SSH into my account jimbo on the machine l0ath1ng without being presented with a password challenge (assuming I did NOT enter a passphrase when I generated the RSA key in the first step).  Note that I will not be able to use this key to bypass the password when logging into jimbo@l0ath1ng from any account OTHER than root@ph34r - if I were try it from jimbo@ph34r, I would still need a password.
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If I wanted to log in from or to any other user accounts, the steps would be the same, just do them as the appropriate user.
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NOTE: it is highly HIGHLY recommended that you only set up passwordless authentication to extremely neutered accounts on the target machine; perhaps an account with absolutely no privileges at all beyond [[sudo]] permission (if necessary) to run a single script which the account in question DOES NOT have write permission on.  This limits the damage a potential rogue user who compromises the computer on the other end could cause.
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One way to use passwordless authentication in a safe way, is to replace the default shell (sh, csh, bash...) by a more restricted shell. The scponly is such a shell. Scponly only allows a very restricted set of commands. It can also do a chroot, thus greatly limiting the access to the system. Scponly is mainly used to let people access a remote account with commands like "scp" or "rsync" over "ssh"to do secure remote backups.
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----
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You may also be interested in these articles at IBM's "developerworks" library:
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[http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-keyc.html Understanding RSA/DSA authentication, Part 1]<br>
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[http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-keyc2/ OpenSSH key management, Part 2]<br>
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[http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-keyc3/ OpenSSH key management, Part 3]
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----
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[[Category:Common Tasks]] [[Category:FreeBSD for Servers]][[Category:Configuring FreeBSD]]
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Revision as of 13:28, 2 July 2009

On client machine

cd ~/.ssh
ssh-keygen -t rsa

Transfer id_rsa.pub to server:~/.ssh

On server machine

cd ~/.ssh
cat id_rsa.pub >> authorized_keys
rm id_rsa.pub
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