I have 2 servers - let's call them A and B. I want to run a dump on Server A, push it down an SSH tunnel and write it to a tape drive on Server B.

I have the code for this elsewhere, however the ssh tunnel is not working for me.

What I am doing:

1) On server A: ssh-keygen -t rsa. No Passphrase entered.
Creates files id_rsa and id_rsa.pub in the folder ~/.ssh

2) scp id_rsa.pub Server B./ssh/id_rsa.pub
Server B asks for password at this point and adds server B to known_hosts. I now have id_rsa.pub in the same location as id_rsa on Server A. So far so good

3) This is where there is some confusion. Various walkthrough advise copying id_rsa.pub to authorized_keys, authorized_keys2, or using cat to do the same. Anyway, I've tried a few options.

4) Exit from server B.

5) Attempt to ssh from server A to Server B

6) Server B asks for users password! All the tutorials say I should be done.

Any more tips? Do I need to have configured / be running something else?

Managed to find the solution. Most turorials / walkthoughs don't go into detail on how sshd needs to be configured.

The following link was buried in another similar question to this and had the details required to make this work:

ssh with keys

That's the part you are missing then. Just having id_rsa.pub in that directory won't do anything, you have to add it's content to the file 'authorized_keys' on the server.
Typically, you'd do
to append your public key to the file, as you might collect more than one key in there (one for each client you are connecting from). You can then remove the file id_rsa.pub.

Make sure you don't misspell 'authorized_keys'. If it still doesn't work, double check the spelling first. )

Heh ... you *could* have stumbled across this in the tutorial section.



Cheers,
Tink

Cheers

That has the same flaw as most that I came across - no run through of the sshd.conf settings.

Most of the tutorials stop once the public key is in authorized_keys on the server :-(

Not sure what I was missing, but the tutorial I linked to aboce does at least go through the sshd.conf...