I use ssh key authentication to rsync data from my weather station to it’s website. Mysteriously it started failing a few days ago. After a bit of hair pulling and unhelpful ssh -vvv output, I found the cause. The permissions of the authorized_keys file on the server were incorrect.
-rw-rw-r– 1 stan4dnet pg478973 391 2008-05-07 12:14 authorized_keys
This file is readable by more than just you. Newer versions of ssh see this, recongize it as a security hole, and prevent you from doing something stupid. Lesson Learned: Make sure that the files in .ssh are writable only by you, on both machines, and non-executable by anyone.
Some people recommend a simple “chmod 644 *” in your .ssh directories. I don’t. I recommend:
chmod 400 *
June 8th, 2008 at 09:47
Surely you mean 600
June 8th, 2008 at 10:07
well, only 600 if you want to write to it as a non-root user.
I should clarify, if it’s 400, only root can change it.
if it’s 600, then you can change it.
June 8th, 2008 at 10:19
Nothing to do with ssh, but what’s your weather station and how does it work?
June 9th, 2008 at 07:53
http://www.stan4d.net/wx