SSH into your server without a password

November 20, 2009 โ€” 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

  1. Run sshd with the verbose option. -v
  1. 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

View source