Establishing a password-less SSH Session

[BrianFleishman]

Hello,

I am trying to establish a SSH session to my ESXi 5 server so that I can run some scripts unattended. I am using Putty on a dedicated WinXP VM that I do all my scripting from. I can easily establish a session to my HOST using putty but would like to do so without having to type in my root password. It is just a small environment and I am the only admin.

I followed this blog article:

http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/07/enabling-password-free-ssh-access-on-esxi-50.html

I complete all the steps successfully but I still get prompted for a PW. I think the issue is that I havent got the public key copied over to my windows computer where I am establishing my SSH session from and the article doesnt explain how to do that.

Am I correct? I am a novice with UNIX and VM for that matter and have hit the "Wall" so to speak on this. Can someone help? Thanks.

Brian

[BrianFleishman]

Anyone?

-Brian

[nielse · Accepted solution]

You will need to generate a public and private key on Windows using puttygen. You will then have to copy the public key towards your ESXi host (.ssh/authorized_keys).

You will then have to configure putty on how to use the private key and you will be able to login via SSH without password.

I suggest you use https://hkn.eecs.berkeley.edu/~dhsu/ssh_public_key_howto.html as a guide.

[BrianFleishman]

Thanks. I will give that article a try.

-Brian

[BrianFleishman]

That article worked great. Thanks.

-Brian