Using Putty Keys for Password-less logins

Content:
OpenSSH Key Generation
Converting an OpenSSH Private Key to a Putty Key (ppk)
Creating a key using puttygen to login to a remote ssh server
enabling a keep alive for your ssh session
changing keyboard mappings for BSD systems
How to do x11 tunneling

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• putty
• ssh
• keys
• password-less login
• openssh
• ppk
• puttygen

[shelzmike]

Video is a great tutorial. Far too often people do not take the time to explain things fully. Anyhow, I have tried both ways and every time I get the error message "Server refused our key". I checked my sshd_config and have uncommented the following lines:

RSAAuthentication yes

PubkeyAuthentication yes

AuthorizedKeysFile ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2

Any help on what might be causing this? I tried several times and still nothing. Thanks!

[morefood2001]

@shelzmike Try generating the key via puttygen (around 11 minutes into the video) and using the resulting key to paste into the authorized_keys file. Then use the resulting PPK private key in putty to authenticate. You'll have to connect via username@serveraddress for that to work. Outside of this, the server should work, so perhaps try it on a different linux system to make sure you aren't missing a step.

[morefood2001]

@shelzmike Oh, you also need to set the permissions on the authorized_keys2 file to 600, the directory .ssh should have 711 for its permissions.

[dion2k]

you are gay aren't you?

[morefood2001]

@dion2k Nope.

[shelzmike]

@morefood2001 Thanks for the help. Actually, it was not any of those things. As it turns out, I am using Ubuntu Server 11.10 and even though I do not recall selecting this option, apparently the home directory is encrypted when I am not logged in - since the keys are attempting to connect before login, this will not work. Move the authorized_keys and it works, do google search for SSH error "server refused our key" Adam Wright and the solution is the first link. Thanks again!

[cjjoy1980]

Thanks for the detailed explanation.. 

[xoundboy]

Thanks for the video - very good quality and informative!