Access server

SSH

SSH keys provide **a more secure way** of logging into a virtual private server with SSH than using a password alone. Generating a key pair provides you with two long string of characters: a public and a private key. You can place the public key on the server, and then unlock it by connecting to it with a client that already has the private key. When the two match up, the system unlocks without the need for a password. You can increase security even more by protecting the private key with a passphrase.

Create RSA Key Pair

You create your rsa key pair in the computer you want to log to the server

Be careful to pay attention from which user you create the rsa key pair in your local machine (computer). Since the rsa key pairs are saved in a hidden directory in my user home directory (~/.ssh), if trying to login from a different user, it will not work

So, from the user in my localmachine that I wish to use to access the server, I will create my rsa key pair. When generating the key, you will need to introduce a **"passphrase".**

$ ssh-keygen

By default it will generate two keys in ~/.ssh, a public key and a private key. The public key we will send to an admin of Anarcha server.

Send public key to the server

After generating an SSH key pair, you will want to copy your public key to your new server.

Assuming you generated an SSH key pair using the previous step, use the following command at the terminal of your local machine to print your public key (id_rsa.pub):

**cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub**

This should print your public SSH key, which should look something like the following:

ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQDBGTO0tsVejssuaYR5R3Y/i73SppJAhme1dH7W2c47d4gOqB4izP0+fRLfvbz/tnXFz4iOP/H6eCV05hqUhF+KYRxt9Y8tVMrpDZR2l75o6+xSbUOMu6xN+uVF0T9XzKcxmzTmnV7Na5up3QM3DoSRYX/EP3utr2+zAqpJIfKPLdA74w7g56oYWI9blpnpzxkEd3edVJOivUkpZ4JoenWManvIaSdMTJXMy3MtlQhva+j9CgguyVbUkdzK9KKEuah+pFZvaugtebsU+bllPTB0nlXGIJk98Ie9ZtxuY3nCKneB+KjKiXrAvXUPCI9mWkYS/1rggpFmu3HbXBnWSUdf localuser@machine.local

Select the public key, and copy it to your clipboard or send it by email.

creating new sysadmin accounts

Changing to root user $ su root

we create superuser $ adduser superusername

add the superuser to the group sudoers $ sudo addgroup (username) sudoers

creating .ssh directory and authorized_keys document in the superuser home directory

As the superuser to whom we want to give ssh access to the server, create a new directory called .ssh and restrict its permissions with the following commands:

$ mkdir .ssh $ chmod 700 .ssh

Now open a file in .ssh called authorized_keys with a text editor. We will use nano to edit the file:

$ nano .ssh/authorized_keys**

Now copy-paste the public key by pasting it into the editor.

Save and close.

Now restrict the permissions of the authorized_keys file with this command: $ chmod 600 .ssh/authorized_keys**

Now the new sysadmin may SSH login as your new user, using the private key as authentication.