ssh still asking for password

2
votes

I have two servers called: "eps" and "dev". On server dev I have added the public key of eps to the authorized_keys file. I have then restarted SSH service on the dev server to ensure it picks up the new public key I added to the authorized_keys file.

However when I then try and ssh into "dev" from "eps", I'm prompted for passphrase for a key. the exact prompt is: Enter passphrase for key '/home/webmaster/.ssh/id_rsa':

Why is this happening? I thought it should just log me into the dev server right away.

1
sshssh-keys
Did you do a: ssh-copy-id <USERNAME>@<REMOTEHOST> - Atari911
No, I manually copied and pasted it. Let me give that a try. - John Crawford

1 Answers

4
votes

When creating the SSH key using ssh-keygen you are prompted for a password to secure the private key. Therefore for SSH to use the key the password has to be entered to unlock the private key locally, which is why you are seeing the "Enter passphrase for key". This is not the same as the password to authenticate the user on the SSH server.

In order to have a password-less login you need to create a keyfile with ssh-keygen which has an empty password.