Permanant Automatic ssh login without password

[cdgary]

I'm ssh-ing between two machines and entering the passphrase key every time I need to connect to the other machine's ssh server. I added my key to the ssh-agent daemon using the below commands, which allowed me to use ssh one time without using the password, but when I returned back to the machine I originally ssh-ed from it prompted me for my passphrase key again when trying to ssh to the same machine, which totally defeats the point. How can I get the passphrase to hold permanently so I won't have these issues.

exec ssh-agent /bin/bash
ssh-add $HOME/.ssh/id_dsa
Enter passphrase for /home/user/.ssh/id_dsa:

[TDAY]

I've always created an ssh key with ssh-keygen -t rsa which creates a file ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub which I copy to the remote target in directory ~/.ssh/ via scp. Then you can cat the id_rsa.pub you copied into a file authorized_hosts. This should set up the "automatic" login process for you based on rsa keys.

[cdgary]

I'm aware of all of that. My post discusses issues I was having with a permanent automatic ssh login without using the passphrase key.

[vallimar]

If you don't want to ever enter the passphrase, why not just create a new key without one?

[AndrewSerk]

Hello,

To create the ssh key you should use dsa not rsa:

ssh-keygen -t dsa

To copy your key to a remote server you should use:

ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub HOSTNAME_OR_IPADDRESS

Hope this helps,

[jpollard]

As a reminder, this is no longer a secured login. IF your account is ever penetrated on any system, all your systems have also been penetrated.

[AndrewSerk]

Originally Posted by jpollard

As a reminder, this is no longer a secured login. IF your account is ever penetrated on any system, all your systems have also been penetrated.

Thanks jpollard,
Old habits, Please disregard my above post.

[aesir]

I think pam_ssh is what you are looking for.
It's in the repos, "yum info pam_ssh".

[stevea]

Originally Posted by AndrewSerk

Thanks jpollard,
Old habits, Please disregard my above post.

There is no reason to disregard or retract it. It's merely a method that has an obvious security implication that JP' describes. That doesn't make it an unusable method.

Originally Posted by cdgary

I'm aware of all of that. My post discusses issues I was having with a permanent automatic ssh login without using the passphrase key.

You need to describe exactly what you mean - b/c you are making up terms.

'passphrase key' is meaningless. Keygen utility is used to create bother user and host keys. Your user account key can have a passphrase associated with it. In that case authentication requires two pieces of information - the other half-key and the passphrase.

If you create a key w/o a passphrase as AndrewSerk suggests then no passphrase - not even a null passphrase will be requested.

So you can do this ....

[stevea@crucibulum Desktop]$ ssh hypoxylon
Last login: Fri Dec 23 04:08:41 2011 from crucibulum.localdomain
[stevea@hypoxylon ~]$ ssh lycoperdon
Last login: Wed Dec 21 09:49:59 2011
[stevea@lycoperdon ~]$

with no password or passphrase authentication.


Next - your meaning of "permanent automatic ssh login".

The putting the public half-key into ~/.ssh/authorized_hosts means the PubkeyAuthentication scheme can be use for authentication. That seems like 'permanent' to me.

There is no 'automatic' login per se. You either type "ssh me@somehost" or you can cause a window to appear that does this at login.