Re: Connect with null passphrases

On Wed, 2006-12-06 at 08:04 -0500, John Stefani wrote:
> I have some cron jobs that use ssh (version 4.4p1) to connect to other 
> servers and run certain tasks.  The users in question sometimes are real 
> users, sometimes fictitious users that I created only for running the cron 
> job.  I changed to *NP* the password field of /etc/shadow for the 
> fictitious users on the servers the cron jobs connect to, and all works 
> happily.  Here's my problem:  those servers to which the cron job tries to 
> connect to as a real user, who has a real password, does not allow ssh 
> connections with null passphrases.  I can't set the password field in 
> /etc/shadow to *NP* because sometimes I have to connect as the real user. 
> Does someone know how I can connect automatically to a server, using ssh, 
> as a user that has a password, but with a null passphrase?  Hope the above 
> was not too confusing...

Set up a private key without a passphrase and have the cron job use
public-key authentication.  Just make sure the private key file is
well-protected (0600 or 0400 the user who needs it).

- Michael

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