I am using Windows machine and I have WinSCP installed.
I am writing a script that logs in to the server and downloads file.
I do not want to store account password in the script. Is there anyway I can login to server with some-kind of host-key or private-key or something.
Yes, you can use the public key authentication. But for that you still have to store the private key along with your script. Normally the key is encrypted with a passphrase. To automate the login, you would have to store the passphrase to the script file anyway (using the -passphrase switch). So still, if anyone gets an access to your machine, he/she is still able to steal your identity, just as with the password. Though there's an advantage. You can have multiple keys (while only one password). If you use a special key for the script and the key is ever compromised, you can revoke it, while keeping the other keys.
Note that, if you are not absolutely sure of the physical and electronic security of the system on which you are connecting, there's hardly any way to setup an automatic authentication. If you are sure about the security, storing password in the script file is just ok.
Anyway, your question is mostly duplicate of:
How do I setup Public-Key Authentication?
For WinSCP specifics, see the guide to Setting up SSH public key authentication.
See also the WinSCP guide to Protecting credentials used for automation.
I had a similar issue on windows so I used Putty instead http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html
If you need to generate a public key then use: http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/x86/puttygen.exe
I gave the public key + password to whoever owned the SFTP server to install it on his side.
I saved the private key on my side lest say on "C:\privatekey.ppk"
You don't use password on your script but you link to the private which you must have on you machine.
Then, when you want to automate a batch to download from the FTP server the Pageant in order to load the private key into session http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/x86/pageant.exe
Then use the PSFTP to connect and perform actions http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/x86/psftp.exe
So here is sample code for the batch file:
!--Loading the key to session--!
#C:\pageant.exe "C:\privatekey.ppk"
!--Calling the PSFTP.exe with the uaser and sftp address + command list file--!
#C:\psftp user#your.server.address -b C:\sftp_cmd.txt
Command list file (sftp_cmd.txt) will like like this:
mget "*.*" !--downloading every thing
!--more commands can follow here
close
Now, all you need to to schedule it in scheduled tasks *I wish it was simple as unix's cron job....
I'm trying to connect to my Debian Google Compute Engine server through PuTTy (I've tried other alternatives too) but when I do I get the error "Disconnected: No supported authentication methods available (server sent: publickey)
The google server came without a username and password, only a url to automatically login to their own terminal.
I had PuTTY working and then one day got this error.
Solution: I had revised the folder path name containing my certificates (private keys), and this caused Pageant to lose track of the certificates and so was empty.
Once I re-installed the certificate into Pageant then Putty started working again.
Turn on Password Authentication
By default, you need to use keys to ssh into your google compute engine machine, but you can turn on password authentication if you do not need that level of security.
Tip: Use the Open in browser window SSH option from your cloud console to gain access to the machine. Then switch to the root user with sudo su - root to make the configuration changes below.
Edit the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file.
Change PasswordAuthentication and ChallengeResponseAuthentication to yes.
Restart ssh /etc/init.d/ssh restart.
Please follow this guide: https://gist.github.com/feczo/7282a6e00181fde4281b
with pictures.
In short:
Using Puttygen, click 'Generate' move the mouse around as instructed and wait
Enter your desired username
Enter your password
Save the private key
Copy the entire content of the 'Public key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys file' window. Make sure to copy every single character from the beginning to the very end!
Go to the Create instances page in the Google Cloud Platform Console and in the advanced options link paste the contents of your public key.
Note the IP address of the instance once it is complete.
Open putty, from the left hand menu go to Connection / SSH / Auth and define the key file location which was saved.
From the left hand menu go to Connection / Data and define the same username
Enter the IP address of your instance
name the connection below saved Sessions as 'GCE' click on 'Save'
double click the 'GCE' entry you just created
accept the identy of the host
Now login with the password you specified earlier and run
sudo su - and you are all set.
You need to use an SSH key to login to your instance.
The GCE documentation explains the process here.
I had the same problem but got it working by changing enable-oslogin from TRUE to FALSE in google cloud.
from:
to:
I had the same issue and just figured it out !!
Assuming that you already went and created private/public key added your public key on the remote server ... type in username#remotehost.com and THEN go to Connection -> SSH -> Auth and click Browse to locate your private key. After you choose it will populate the input field. After that click OPEN ...
So the important thing here is the order... make sure you first enter parameters for the host and then locate your private key.
I got this error because I had forgotten to add my username behind the key in the GCE metadata section. For instance, you are meant to add an entry into the metadata section which looks like this:
sshKeys username:key
I forgot the username: part and thus when I tried to login with that username, I got the no supported auth methods error.
Or, to turn off the ssh key requirement entirely, check out my other answer.
Apparently running sudo chmod -R a+rw on your home folder causes this to happen as well.
This problem mainly caused by your connected username not have the access to the shell in GCE. So you use the following steps to solve this issue.
gcloud auth list
If you are using the correct login. please follow the below steps. otherwise use
gcloud auth revoke --all
gcloud auth login [your-iam-user]
and you get the token or it automatically detect the token.
gcloud compute --project "{projectid}" ssh --zone "{zone_name}" "{instance_name}" .
if you dont know this above line click to compute engine-> ssh dropdown arrow-> view google command-> copy that code and use it
Now it update your metadata and it is available in your computer's folder Users->username
~/.ssh/google_compute_engine.ppk
~/.ssh/google_compute_engine.pub
Then you create a new ppk file using puttygen and you give the username, which you want like my_work_space. Then
save the publickey and privatekey in a folder.
Next step: Copy the public key data from puttygen and create new ssh key in gcloud metadata
cloud console ->compute engine->metadata->ssh key->add new item->paste the key and save it
and now return your shell commandline tool then enter
sudo chown -R my_work_space /home/my_work_space
now you connect this private key using sftp to anywhere. and it opens the files without showing the permission errors
:) happy hours.
If the private key has been generated with ssh-keygen in Linux it needs to be converted with puttygen because Putty does not support openssh keys.
Start puttygen, and click on Conversions - Import key, then click Browse and select the private key generated with openssh, then click on Save private key.
Use your new key to connect.
I faced the same issue and solve after several trial and error.
In the /etc/ssh/ssh_config, set
PubkeyAuthentication yes
AuthorizedKeysFile .ssh/authorized_keys
PasswordAuthentication no
AuthenticationMethods publickey
then, open putty.
In the "Saved Sessions", enter the server IP, go through the path Connection->SSH->Auth->Browse on the left panel to search your private key and open it.
Last but not least, go back to Session of putty on the left panel and you can see the server IP address is still in the field, "Saved Sessions", then click "Save", which is the critical step.
It will let the user login without password any more.
Have fun,
Download "PuttyGEN" get publickey and privatekey
use gcloud SSH edit and paste your publickey located in /home/USER/.ssh/authorized_keys
sudo vim ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
Tap the i key to paste publicKEY.
To save, tap Esc, :, w, q, Enter.
Edit the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file.
sudo vim /etc/ssh/sshd_config
Change
PasswordAuthentication no
[...]
ChallengeResponseAuthentication to no.
[...]
UsePAM no
[...]
Restart ssh
/etc/init.d/ssh restart.
the rest config your putty as tutorial
NB:choose the pageant add keys and start session would be better
Electricity went down and got this error. Solution was to double click your .ppk (Putty Private Key) and enter your password.
PasswordAuthentication and ChallengeResponseAuthentication default set to NO in rhel7.
Change them to NO and restart sshd.
Similar problem - same error message. I got the same message when trying to clone something from bitbucket with ssh. The problem was in my ssh configuration configured in the mercurial.ini: I used the wrong bitbucket username. After I corrected the user name things worked.
For me these was my problem, solution from https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/282908/server-refused-public-key-signature-despite-accepting-key-putty
"Looking at the log /var/log/secure showed that it was just downright refused. I'm somewhat new to centos since I'm mainly a debian kind of guy, so I was unaware of /var/log/secure
After checking this and doing a bit of searching, it turns out PermitRootLogin no needs to be PermitRootLogin without-password if you want to specifically use just keys for root login. That did the trick. Thanks everyone for contributing."
I had the same error message and discovered that my mistake was in the username I used with putty. Apparently GCE SSH Keys listing would change your username characters in some of the listing. In my case, the underscore was changed to period. i.e: my_username becomes my.username
I inadvertently copied the wrong username from the listing and got the same error message.
I know this is an old question, but I had the same problem and solved it thanks to this answer.
I use Putty regularly and have never had any problems. I use and have always used public key authentication. Today I could not connect again to my server, without changing any settings.
Then I saw the answer and remembered that I inadvertently ran chmod 777 . in my user's home directory. I connected from somewhere else and simply ran chmod 755 ~. Everything was back to normal instantly, I didn't even have to restart sshd.
I hope I saved some time from someone
I couldn't find any basic info for designers (on a mac) for how SSH keys work - so thought I'd ask them here.
If I want to connect my work workstation to:
Github
A DEV server
A LIVE server
Do I generate one ssh key on the workstation and add it to all those servers or do I generate multiple keys - one for each server?
Once I've generated a key (or keys), do I copy it into the id_rsa file in my user account on that server (I realize I may have to create the id_rsa file)?
And if I now want to access the same server but from my home laptop, do I add the laptop's ssh key to the same id_rsa file on the server or do I create a new file?
If I need to create a new file, does it matter what the file is called - laptop_rsa?
I basically want to disable root login on my servers but I don't really understand how SSH applies to multiple machines and multiple servers.
Any help or pointers in the right direction would be much appreciated.
Cheers
You only need one key for the local machine that you are connecting
to all three servers.
For the DEV server and the LIVE server, you can add the contents of
your id_rsa.pub file to the
authorized_keys file on each of the target servers.
This file will be in the ~/.ssh directory. You will
need to create the file if it's not there (touch
~/.ssh/authorized_keys). Adding your public key to this file
will let you login with your passphrase rather than a password.
Place all authorized keys (i.e. your laptops id_rsa.pub) in the same
authorized_keys file on the target server.
Adding your keys to authorized_keys doesn't affect root login (that is a separate setting), however, it will prevent people from attempting to brute-force your password if you then turn off password login.
I know that we shuld do
ssh user#target
but where do we specify the password ?
Hmm thanks for all your replies.
My requirement is I have to start up some servers on different machines. All servers should be started with one shell script. Well, entering password every time seems little bad but I guess I will have to resort to that option. One reason why I don't want to save the public keys is I may not connect to same machines every time. It is easy to go back and modify the script to change target addresses though.
The best way to do this is by generating a private/public key pair, and storing your public key on the remote server. This is a secure way to login w/o typing in a password each time.
Read more here
This cannot be done with a simple ssh command, for security reasons. If you want to use the password route with ssh, the following link shows some scripts to get around this, if you are insistent:
Scripts to automate password entry
The ssh command will prompt for your password. It is unsafe to specify passwords on the commandline, as the full command that is executed is typically world-visible (e.g. ps aux) and also gets saved in plain text in your command history file. Any well written program (including ssh) will prompt for the password when necessary, and will disable teletype echoing so that it isn't visible on the terminal.
If you are attempting to execute ssh from cron or from the background, use ssh-agent.
The way I have done this in the past is just to set up a pair of authentication keys.
That way, you can log in without ever having to specify a password and it works in shell scripts. There is a good tutorial here:
http://linuxproblem.org/art_9.html
SSH Keys are the standard/suggested solution. The keys must be setup for the user that the script will run as.
For that script user, see if you have any keys setup in ~/.ssh/ (Key files will end with a .pub extension)
If you don't have any keys setup you can run:
ssh-keygen -t rsa
which will generate ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub (the -t option has other types as well)
You can then copy the contents of this file to ~(remote-user)/.ssh/authorized_keys on the remote machine.
As the script user, you can test that it works by:
ssh remote-user#remote-machine
You should be logged in without a password prompt.
Along the same lines, now when your script is run from that user, it can auto SSH to the remote machine.
If you really want to use password authentication , you can try expect. See here for an example
I have my Hudson CI server setup. I have a CVS repo that I can only checkout stuff via ssh. But I see no way to convince Hudson to check out via ssh. I tried all sorts of options when supplying my connection string.
Has anyone done this? I gotta think it has been done.
If I still remember CVS, I thought you have to set CVS_RSH environment variable to ssh. I suspect you need to set this so that your Tomcat process gets this value inherited.
You can check Hudson system information to see exactly what environment variables the JVM is seeing (and passes along to the build.)
I wrote up an article that tackles this you can find it here:
http://www.openscope.net/2011/01/03/configure-ssh-authorized-keys-for-cvs-access/
Essentially you want to set up passphraseless ssh keys for your build user. This will allow authentication to occur without the need to work out some kind of way to key in your password.
<edit> i.e. Essentially the standard .ssh key client & server install/exchange.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Shell#Key_management
for the jenkins user account:
install user key (public & private part) in ~/.ssh (generate it fresh or use existing user key)
on cvs server:
install user key (public part) in ~/.ssh
add to authorized_keys
back on jenkins user account:
access cvs from command-line as jenkins user and accept remote host key (to known_hosts)
* note any time remote server changes key/ip you will need to manually access cvs and accept key again *
</edit>
There's another way to do it but you have to manually log from the build machine to your cvs server and keep the ssh session open so hudson/jenkins can piggyback the connection. Seemed kinda pointless to me though since you want your CI server to be as hands off as possible.