I provided an answer on Stack Overflow that explains the step-by-step process needed to set up password-less access via SSH. Here are those instructions adapted for your specific needs.
First, set the SSH connection into verbose mode by using the -v
flag like this:
ssh -v localhost
As explained in the ssh
man page; accessible via man ssh
:
-v Verbose mode. Causes ssh to print debugging messages about its
progress. This is helpful in debugging connection, authentica-
tion, and configuration problems. Multiple -v options increase
the verbosity. The maximum is 3.
This has saved me a lot of headaches in the past by showing me exactly how the login process is flowing & what exactly is clogging it up. For example, here is the output of me running that command on my local Mac OS X 10.9.5 machine:
ssh -v localhost
OpenSSH_6.2p2, OSSLShim 0.9.8r 8 Dec 2011
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh_config
debug1: /etc/ssh_config line 20: Applying options for *
debug1: /etc/ssh_config line 53: Applying options for *
debug1: Connecting to localhost [::1] port 22.
debug1: Connection established.
debug1: identity file /Users/Giacomo1968/.ssh/id_rsa type 1
debug1: identity file /Users/Giacomo1968/.ssh/id_rsa-cert type -1
debug1: identity file /Users/Giacomo1968/.ssh/id_dsa type -1
debug1: identity file /Users/Giacomo1968/.ssh/id_dsa-cert type -1
debug1: Enabling compatibility mode for protocol 2.0
debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_6.2
debug1: Remote protocol version 2.0, remote software version OpenSSH_6.2
debug1: match: OpenSSH_6.2 pat OpenSSH*
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT sent
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT received
debug1: kex: server->client aes128-ctr [email protected] none
debug1: kex: client->server aes128-ctr [email protected] none
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REQUEST(1024<1024<8192) sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_GROUP
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_INIT sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REPLY
debug1: Server host key: RSA 01:aa:8e:8e:b9:e1:4b:e8:bd:c5:a2:20:a3:c7:f1:18
debug1: Host 'localhost' is known and matches the RSA host key.
debug1: Found key in /Users/Giacomo1968/.ssh/known_hosts:43
debug1: ssh_rsa_verify: signature correct
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS received
debug1: Roaming not allowed by server
debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_REQUEST sent
debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_ACCEPT received
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,keyboard-interactive
debug1: Next authentication method: publickey
debug1: Offering RSA public key: /Users/Giacomo1968/.ssh/id_rsa
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,keyboard-interactive
debug1: Trying private key: /Users/Giacomo1968/.ssh/id_dsa
debug1: Next authentication method: keyboard-interactive
Password:
As you can see, it gets up the password prompt. But prior to that it is clearly checking for my RSA public key. And since I don’t have one, it just rolls over to the next authentication method. Pay attention to the output of ssh -v
when you run it on your set to see where things get choked.
Also be sure the SSH files on the destination machine have permissions that match the following & are owned by the account trying to access like this example shows:
-rw------- [username] [usergroup] authorized_keys
-rw------- [username] [usergroup] id_rsa
-rw-r--r-- [username] [usergroup] id_rsa.pub
-rw-r--r-- [username] [usergroup] known_hosts
So run this command to chmod
the authorized_keys
file:
sudo chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
And run this command to chmod
the id_rsa
file:
sudo chmod 600 ~/.ssh/id_rsa