New user having trouble with FreeNX/NoMachine/SSH authentication
 

Hi! I've finally decided I've spent enough time Googling, and enough times running "ssh-keygen -t -dsa" to admit that I don't know what I'm doing.

I have a new VPS server running Ubuntu, mostly because I think I got a good deal on it and that I'd enjoy messing around with it as a learning tool.

At the moment, I am able to connect to it fine using VNC, but I'm trying to get FreeNX to work, using a NoMachine Windows client, since I understand it may have better performance than VNC.

To authenticate, NoMachine first asks for a Private key file. I was able to create this on the server, copy the file to the Windows machine, and successfully authenticate it, yes! But then on the next screen, it asks me for my username and "optional public key passphrase." This is where I'm stuck.

Google pointed to me to that "ssh-keygen -t -dsa" command, which I've run more than a few times, creating passphrases, but the NoMachine client won't accept them. "Cannot accept public key" it tells me. I can find the id_rsa.pub file easily, but don't know what to do with it. Do I move it to the Windows client like I did the FreeNX Private Key?

I feel stuck here. I *think* it should be as easy as running that ssh-keygen command, creating a public passkey, and entering it into the NoMachine Windows client, but it won't take.

Any advice on what I should be doing? :)

Thanks
-Matt

Hi,

the passphrase that it wants is the one your entered when you generated the private key. From what you wrote I suspect you didn't use a passphrase.

Running ssh-keygen will create a new private and public key pair that you can optionally protect with a passphrase. However, you already have a key pair, since you said you copied a private key from the vps.

Evo2.