SSH - Shells

October 23, 2021 12:55

HowTo SSH KeyAuth

  • use ssh-keygen on the client
  • copy the content of the new clients .pub to servers ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
  • (maybe use ssh-copy-id USER@HOST)
  • (client connects now with ssh [] -i KEYFILE_PATH) - should work without if KEYFILE is located under clients ~/.ssh/

Example config

Located at /etc/ssh/sshd_config APPEND or modify for more security and features…

# Automatic IDLE-Timeout after 30 minutes
ClientAliveInterval 1800
ClientAliveCountMax 0

# No empty passwords
PermitEmptyPasswords no

# No ROOT login
PermitRootLogin no

# For more security force protocol v2
Protocol 2

# Maybe run SSH on a non standard port
#Port 2025

# x11's SSH-Forward - it's a feature xP
X11Forwarding yes

# !!!DANGER!!! FORCE GROUP MEMBERSHIP (REQUIRES sudo addgroup [GROUP] before)
#AllowGroups [GROUP]

# Allow public key authentication
#PubkeyAuthentication yes

# !!!DANGER!!! FORCE PUBLIC KEY AUTH FOR THIS MACHINE
#PasswordAuthentication no

SSH Agent

Whoops? You are getting asked for your key password again? Then the SSH-Agent crashed again… Try to execute:

eval `ssh-agent`

And then import your existing key with:

ssh-add

If this happens multiple times, try to add that line into your bashrc.