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I'm writing a cron job that SSHs into a remote server. Since I'm of course not going to be around to type in a password each time the cron job runs, I need to be able to SSH without a password. I followed the "First Method" instructions in the second reply on this page:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/ssh-with-password-533684/

That kind of worked, but now instead of being prompted for a password, I'm prompted for my passphrase.

I set up some other RSA stuff before to be able to access something on GitHub (which I still use) so there might be some interference coming from that.

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    If you're using this yourself, instead of a script, look into ssh-agent. It will allow you to enter your passphrase once for the session and is a bit more secure then having no passphrase. Commented Jun 7, 2011 at 18:09

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When generating the keys, leave the pass phrase blank.

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  • Oooooh, that's not my favorite answer to this question. Especially if we'e talking about a root login on the remote system, having the key passphrase-unsecured means that anybody who can gain access to your private key file on disk - which is often on a less-secure client system - can now log in carte-blanche as root. Kyle's comment above about ssh-agent is correct: you can use ssh-agent to ensure your key remains secure on disk, but functions at runtime. I am doing this for my own ssh-keyed cron tasks. Commented Jun 10, 2011 at 17:36

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