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Configuring SSH Login without Password

Configuring SSH Login without Password

Note

Before you begin, ensure that you have not configured SSH login without password.

By default, Secure Socket Shell (SSH) requires a password for authentication on a remote server. However, with some changes in the configuration, you can log in to the remote host through the SSH protocol, without having to enter your SSH password multiple times.

This is specially helpful when using the cluster start/stop scripts like snappy-start-all.sh to launch the SnappyData cluster spanning multiple hosts.

These steps are provided as a guide for setting up passwordless SSH. Check with your system administrator for more details.

  1. Check SSH
    Check if ssh is installed on your Linux-based host(s) using below command. systemctl status sshd

    Or on systems where systemctl is not available (for example, some versions of Linux Mint), use below command: service ssh status

  2. Install and start SSH
    To install SSH on Ubuntu systems, run apt update && apt install openssh-server On RHEL/CentOS systems, the command is yum -y install openssh-server openssh-clients

    Then enable and start the SSH service: systemctl enable sshd Or systemctl enable ssh systemctl start sshd Or systemctl start ssh

    Perform above two steps for all the systems which will be part of the SnappyData cluster.

    Mac OS X has a built-in SSH client.

  3. Generate an RSA key pair
    Generate an RSA key pair on your local or primary system by running the following command. ssh-keygen -t rsa -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa -N '' This will create two files (a key pair) at ~/.ssh/ path: 1) id_rsa which is the private key and 2) id_rsa.pub - the public key.

  4. Copy the Public Key
    Once the key pair is generated, append the contents of the public key file id_rsa.pub, to the authorized key file ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on all the remote hosts.

    With this, you can ssh to these remote hosts from your local system, without providing the password. This also enables you to execute cluster start, stop or status scripts from your local system.

    For the single node setup, you can simply append it by executing cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on your system.

  5. Two-Way Access
    Optionally, if you want to also do ssh login from remote hosts to your system without providing the password, copy your id_rsa file generated above and place it at ~/.ssh/ on the remote hosts. Make sure you do not already have a id_rsa file present at that location on remote hosts. scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa <remote-host>:~/.ssh/ # You'll be asked for password here.

    Also, make sure it is not writable for other users. chmod 600 ~/.ssh/id_rsa # On remote host