SSH using PK...

OK, tonight I want to do this - passwordless access to my Linux box from Windows over SSH.

This site looks like what I need - and of course because I'm coming in from a Windows box I'll be using Putty - and this is the story for that part of the equation.

So,

At the PC, run 'puttygen' (taking all defaults - RSA, SSH-2, 1024 - but no passphrase) and save the resulting private key - in my case to priv-key.pps - and copy the txt at the top of the Puttygen screen labelled "Public Key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys file"

Now ssh to the Linux box, type ssh -V to check that we're using OpenSSH, then
(assuming we want to login as root):

• mkdir /root/.ssh
• cd /root/.ssh
• vi authorized_keys
• "Public Key for pasting into OpenSSH..." text we got from Puttygen>
  
• chmod 700 .ssh
• chmod 600 .ssh/authorized_keys

Right, now start Putty and create a config - but in the Connection,Data, AutoLoginName enter root, and in Connection,SSH,Auth section enter the path to the private key (in this case priv-key.pps)

Test.

NB: Putty can log, for debugging, and on my Debian box I found /var/log/loginlog helpful
PS: There is some danger in having no passphrase, but not much...