SSH - Keys vs Passwords

[SlowCoder]

This is my effective sshd setup:

    Protocol 2
    Port 22

    # authentication
    PermitRootLogin no
    PasswordAuthentication no
    PermitEmptyPasswords no
    MaxAuthTries 3

I have key-based authentication set up on my SSH server, and PasswordAuthentication is set to no. It all works great. But when I need to add a new user key, I have to re-enable PasswordAuthentication so they can run ssh-copy-id. If I was doing this in a IT setting, this would be problematic.

Am I missing something?

 

[osprey]

Am I missing something?

Don't know, can't say.

However, for the remote computer, it has to have "PasswordAuthentication no" in it's configs to use a key, but since it's a new user, it won't have that by default, nor a key, and needs to use a password to authenticate to enable it to then be able to send the key. I could be wrong here, but that how it works for me.

 

[dos2unix]

You don't have to run ssh-copy-id.
You can manually copy the key to /home/user/.ssh/authorized_keys file.
(But then, how do you do that without a password?) You can use root
or another account that is already setup.