File permissions for successful SSH login via authorized_keys

Caveat Lector: This blog post was published 11 years ago. Depending on the content, it may no longer be applicable or relevant.

If you want to ssh into your server without being repeatedly prompted for the password you can copy your public ssh key into a file called authorized_keys in the .ssh subdirectory of the user’s home directory. However, this works only if the permissions for this file are set correctly. Otherwise, it will keep asking for the user’s password.

The permissions of the home directory of the remote user must be 755
The permissions of the remote .ssh directory must be 700
The permissions of the remote authorized_keys file must be 600

Of course all of those must be owned by the remote user, and not by root.

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Keywords: ssh