How To Set Up SSH With Public-Key Authentication On Debian Etch

How To Set Up SSH With Public-Key Authentication On Debian Etch Preliminary Notes

This mini-howto explains how to set up an SSH server on Debian Etch with public-key authorization (and optionally with disabled password logins). SSH is a great tool to control Linux-based computers remotely. It's safe and secure.

There's no warranty that it'll work for you. All of these settings are applicable for Debian and -like systems! There may be slightly changes on other systems as well.

 

Installing SSH On The Server

First, we install the SSH on our server. We can do that with this command: (Note that you must be root to do that!)

apt-get install ssh

 

Preparations On Our Client (Desktop) System

Second, we take some preparations on our desktop machine. This PC will be used to connect the server. So, the SSH-server has been installed on a different machine. On your desktop machine, we install the ssh client (which we use to connect the server). Note that installing programs requires root privilege! If you're not logged in as root, please log in! (su root then type your password.) Then install the client:

apt-get install openssh-client

Switch back to your normal user (not root, respectively). Then type these commands in order:

mkdir ~/.ssh
chmod 700 ~/.ssh
cd ~/.ssh

We generate our key-pair, a public-key and a private-key. The public-key will be placed on the server, and you will log in with your private-key. When asked, type your passphrase (it'll be needed for future logins, so remember it!):

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "A comment... usually an email is enough here..."

Then we copy the public key (which we've generated just before) to our (remote) server. The remoteuser should not be root! Choose the default non-root user as remoteuser. (Note the colon at the end of the line! It's important.)

scp -p id_rsa.pub [email protected]:

Then we log in with SSH, and we copy the public key to its right place:

ssh [email protected]
mkdir ~/.ssh
chmod 700 ~/.ssh
cat id_rsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
mv id_rsa.pub ~/.ssh
logout

We have to delete the public key on the desktop, because otherwise the SSH client doesn't allow us to log in to the server. So, type this command:

rm id_rsa.pub

And then we log back:

ssh [email protected]

If we've done everything precisely as detailed above, then you'll be asked for the passphrase. Type it, then you are in and have a fairly safe SSH-environment!

 

Disabling Password Authentication

Disabling it is a good way to have a safer SSH-installation. Then you can log in only with a key-pair, so be careful not to lose it! It's purely optional but safe to activate! But before doing it, please make sure that key-based authentication is working out-of-the-box. Sit down in front the server (so don't log in remotely as we have to restart the SSH later...) and type these commands manually as root:

cd /etc/ssh
cp sshd_config sshd_config.orig
nano sshd_config

You will have the nano text-editor on screen open with the main SSH configuration file. Change these lines (don't bother if any of these lines have a '#' mark at the beginning; if they have, just delete the hashmark as well):

PermitRootLogin		yes
PasswordAuthentication	yes
UsePAM			yes

To these:

PermitRootLogin		no
PasswordAuthentication	no
UsePAM			no

Then save the file with Ctrl + O , and restart the SSH server:

/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!

 

Useful Links:

http://www.openssh.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Shell