Setting Permissions

If the files were generated by the ssh utilities, then the permissions should be correct. But when you copy the files to other hosts you need to make sure they are set correctly.

To confirm that you have the proper permissions on the ssh files, change into the ~/.ssh/ directory. Type:

ls -l

You should see something like this:

-rw-r--r--   1 username   group          330 Jun  5 23:22 authorized_keys
-rw-------   1 username   group          529 Jul 21 15:09 identity
-rw-r--r--   1 username   group          333 Jul 21 15:09 identity.pub
-rw-------   1 username   group         5635 Jul 10 08:23 known_hosts
-rw-------   1 username   group          512 Jul 21 15:02 random_seed

For each of the files, the permission letters on the far left should be just as they are for the above list (the set of -rw-r--r-- etc.) If not, then you should type the following commands:
To set identity to readable/writabele only by you, type:

chmod 600 identity

To set identity.pub to readable/writeable by you and readonly to others, type:

chmod 644 identity.pub

Issues similar commands as necessary for the other files. Double check that it worked by typeing "ls -l" again.

Back to the P-25: SSH howto page.

Rajpaul Bagga