8.3 Getting ready for public key authentication

Connect to your SSH server using PuTTY with the SSH protocol. When the connection succeeds you will be prompted for your user name and password to login. Once logged in, you must configure the server to accept your public key for authentication:

You may also need to ensure that your home directory, your .ssh directory, and any other files involved (such as authorized_keys, authorized_keys2 or authorization) are not group-writable or world-writable; servers will typically ignore the keys unless this is done. You can typically do this by using a command such as

chmod go-w $HOME $HOME/.ssh $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys

Your server should now be configured to accept authentication using your private key. Now you need to configure PuTTY to attempt authentication using your private key. You can do this in any of three ways: