Guidance For SSH

[ryy705]

Hello,
I need to connect to a linux server using a linux box.

1. The server does not require a password. It is locked down by IP.
2. It requires a public key/private key.
3. The linux box I was given has .ssh and .gnupg directory with files in them.

What should I do?

This is what I am thinking:
1. Delete everything from .ssh and gnupg directories.
2. Generate new key:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "me(at)gmail.com"

3. Give the public key to the server admin.
4. Then try to connect.
I don't know what command to use when trying to connect. I don't think the normal

ssh me(at)X.X.X.X

would work. What should I type to specify that there is a private key and that I need to connect using port 1901?

Any input would be highly appreciated. Many thanks in advance.

[Manko10]

When your certificate is in your .ssh folder you can connect with just ssh -p 1901 user@server. The certificate is chosen automatically for you.

[reed9]

You do not need to delete the other stuff in ~/.ssh.

The pulic key needs to be added to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the server, for example, once the generated public key file is on the server, you could do

cat ~/id_rsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Connect to the server on port 1901

ssh -p 1901 user@serveraddress.com

[ryy705]

Thanks for your fast reply.

Unfortunately, it's not working.

I don't have a ~/id_rsa.pub. Note that this was originally someone else's machine.

I get prompted for a password if I do:
ssh -p 1901 user(at)serveraddress(dot)com

There is no password. I can login fine without any password using putty from windows.
If I don't enter a password I end up with following error:
Permission denied (publickey,gssapi-with-mic,password).

Your kind advice would be very much appreciated.

[reed9]

the .pub file is created when you generate the public/private keys on your client machine.

ssh-keygen -t rsa

[ryy705]

So, If I skip step one and do the rest I should be okay right?

[ryy705]

Okay. This is starting to make sense to me.
In my ~/.ssh directory I already have the following files:

authorized_keys  id_rsa  id_rsa.pub  known_hosts

Do I still need to make a new key?

[reed9]

Are you files you created with ssh-keygen? If they were already there, I would probably generate a new pair. Depends how paranoid you are that someone else could have the private key.

[ryy705]

I inherited this computer from someone else. I do not know what he did.
Should I just delete everything and start over?

[reed9]

That's up to you, but there's no harm in removing various config files in your home directory. It just resets things to the default.

I would personally create my own user account on the machine and delete the old one, but again, up to you.