ssh authentication on debian

clipped from www.howtoforge.com How To Set Up SSH With Public-Key Authentication On Debian Etch Preparations On Our Client (Desktop) System apt-get install openssh-client mkdir ~/.ssh chmod 700 ~/.ssh cd ~/.ssh ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "A comment... usually an email is enough here..." scp -p id_rsa.pub remoteuser@remotehost: ssh remoteuser@remotehost mkdir ~/.ssh chmod 700 ~/.ssh cat id_rsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys mv id_rsa.pub ~/.ssh logout rm id_rsa.pub ssh remoteuser@remotehost cd /etc/ssh cp sshd_config sshd_config.orig nano sshd_config /etc/init.d/ssh restart Be careful: if you disable password authentication, then you won't be able to log in with passwords! Only key-based authentication will be available!