Programming

Hi All,

I have designed a web tool in perl cgi in UNIX Solaris 10 platform.

According to my cgi script (in server A) it should execute a script (in server B) using ssh key authentication, but it is not.

And when I am trying to execute the command without cgi script, the script in server B is executing.

I am using following command

/usr/bin/ssh -i mykey -l <login_id> <hostname> /<path>/connection.sh

Can anyone help me on this? and tell me if I am missing any special configuration to be done to execute the script through CGI?

The cgi script almost certainly isn't running under the same user as you login as, but the user ID of the web server, which will prevent it from reading the key files.

You'll need to keep key files owned by the web server in a directory owned by the web server, with similar permissions to your own ~/.ssh and things inside it.

Hi Corona,

Thanks for the input...

As you said the owner of the web server is different from the owner of the key.
But I have given 777 permissions to the my private, in this case any user should be able to access the key....but still the problem persist.

Is there any other troubleshooting step we can perform to resolve this.

Thanks,
Ankit.

No no no. 777 is not the magic sledgehammer to fix all permissions problems. These numbers mean things and have farther consequences than you might think. Do you really want your private key to be read by everyone on the system!?

ssh in fact knows that 777 is ridiculous and stupid, and will refuse to use a key in a folder with 777 permissions.

It should be 700, and owned by the same user as your web server.

The private key should be 600.

The public key should be 644.

Yeah..that's true...I changed the permissions just to check if the key is accessible....well I will create a key owned by the owner running the webserver and see if the problem solves.