Authentication with SSH using public keys

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Tue, Nov 04, 2008 at 12:39:36PM -0800, af300wsm at gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>
>> > Following onto the e-mail I made before, apparently that little 
> permissions
>>
>> > difference for the directory, .ssh, was the problem. Changing it to 
>> 644 
> has,
>>
>> > apparently, fixed the problem.
>>
>>
>>
>> Cool :) . I learnt this from my first SSH public-key authentication
>>
>> configuration ;)
>>
>>
>>
>> Ashish
>>
>> --
>>
>
> Of course I meant to say that changing the perms to 755 fixed it, not 
> 644. I'm still reviewing the docs but I think that this directory could 
> be made 700, is that correct? Or, at the least, 750?

The ~/.ssh directory should be 700.  Remember, sshd runs as root, which
means the permissions shouldn't really matter (sans the execute bit,
which as I said is needed for directories).

You don't want 750 unless you ***really*** intend for members of the
same group to have read access to your ~/.ssh/ directory.  Based on the
OP's description of the setup, he does not need this.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |