Re: [Sheflug] headless

[nospam [at] alexhudson.com]

On Mon, Mar 12, 2001 at 03:14:29PM -0000, Ian Wright wrote:
> Thanks for the info. Of course, I didn't describe things right! ;o{ I did,
> of course, mean the login prompt. So, would I still use this the same as now
> or could it be automated (I know Mandrake has a facility for automatically
> loggin on as a particular user).

Re: Mandrake. Ewww. Don't be so awful :)

Why do you require to have the machine password-less? I'm not really sure what you're trying to achieve?

> If I still had to do it would I do a '.ssh
> <machine name> -l <user>' and would it then ask me for the password?

Depends how you set it up. Firstly, a 'ssh machine -l user' would ask you for the password for the user on that machine. There are several ways you can get around this. The first is to store the ssh public key for that user on the machine - there are instructions on how to do this all over the place. Essentially, ssh-keygen a set of keys, and copy the public one all over the place, making sure to keep the private one private. Take note of all the directory permissions you need - if the permissions are wrong, ssh won't play. But, if you set it up right, when you try to login ssh will ask you for a passphrase instead of a password. What is the benefit of this? Well, unlike a password, a passphrase can be set to '', which means ssh stops asking you for a password. 

It should be noted that logging in via ssh is considered more secure than standard password-y type systems, although it's harder to get right.

The other way is to let ssh-keyagent (or whatever it's called ;) manage the public/private key stuff for you, but again needs a little setting up similar to the above.

HTH,

Alex.

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