SSH into your server without a password

November 20, 2009

On your server:

vim /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Make sure allow rsa and the other RSA lines are uncommented

service sshd restart

Make sure the file ~/.ssh/authorized_keys exists(if it doesn't, make that directory and touch that file).

Run this on your client computer:

ssh-keygen -t rsa

(hit enter a bunch of times)

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh YOURUSERNAME@YOURDOMAIN.com "cat - >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"

Bam! Login without a password!

This is my setup on Fedora VM's running at slicehost.

If you are having problems

The problem is likely due to bad file permissions. The owner of the directory .ssh should be your user/group. The file permissions on it should be: 755. (I think) authorized_keys should be the same owner/group and file permissions should be: 644