Hello everyone.

I have a quick question. I was wondering if there might be some HOW-TO's or getting started with SSH tutorials that anyone may know of.

I would like to start learning on to use ssh keys for local and remote servers.

I have yet to find a decent how to on this.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks.

Tarballed

I struggeld for a while on this too try this

1) login as USER on the client (where you want to connect from)
2) ssh-keygen -t dsa
(don't suppy a passphrase now - you can do that later once the first bit works)
3) scp /home/USER/.ssh/id_dsa.pub REMOTEHOST:/home/USER/.ssh/authorized_keys2
4) ssh REMOTEHOST

That's about it - if you want to put multiple keys on the host you will need to copy the file over then use cat to append it to authorized_keys2. Other than that just make sure you have sshd running on the host.

Thanks for your input david_ross.

I have one more question for you.

I have been able to generate my keys and put them into the appropriate directories on the local and remote machines.

However, when I SSH from box 1 to server 1, I was expecting to be prompted for the passphrase, but I am not.

I seem to be missing, as I was under the impression that once I started generating keys and SSH'ing to the machines that were setup with the keys, I would be asked for a passphrase.

So far, I just enter my useraccount password on the machine I am SSH'ing to.

Any ideas?

Tarballed

If you set up a passphrase you need to run ssh-agent on your local machine when you first login locally - the passphrase is then saved for that session and used whenever you try to make an ssh connection. The whole idea of ssh is that no use identifiable passwords etc are sent over the network. Therefore passphrases are supposed to be just that "phrases". For example "The red cat SPAT on his SUNS brick yellow mat." In other words a long phrase that nobody should be able to guess.