How To Set Up Sudo and SSH Keys on Ubuntu 14.04

This tutorial screencast will show you how to set up a non-root superuser account (sudo) and SSH key authentication on an Ubuntu 14.04 server. Following these steps can improve the security of your server, and is recommended for all Linux servers.

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[tonyfreehauf]

BEST clearest tutorial i have yet found!!! Great Job!!! Plus written Notes - which most tutorials lack

[mohamedsallak]

Thank you, finally useful video on adding ssh public keys manually to a server via remote console, not the copy paste crap in google.

[bvanleeuwen]

Video looks very good, I can confirm that this video can also be used for Debian 8, which is what I have just done.

[JamesOStanworth-Wang]

Thanks for the how-to. Worked as promised!

[modolief]

Good clear instructions, crisply delivered! Thanks holy bejesus for a non-dumb video.

[RemziCavdar]

This is really usefull, thank you guys!
DO is just amazing!

[paulkim]

Hello! I was going through the process and I stopped to check whether I can access via root or not and even after the process of doing "vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config" and changing the permit root to no... Anyone else run into this? thanks!

[polosatus]

You should have used ssh-copy-id to transfer key.

[EddieHuntX]

& I'm DOWNN. After doing the last step sudo vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config Now every-time i try and access either as my users or root via terminal it refuses connection on port 22. :( FML.

I think i may have accidentally typed something in somewhere. Any way of resetting these files to their defaults? I'd appreciate it. Need to start over.

[dave.thedev]

And what if we cannot authenticate? I can't get past ssh root@<ip address>. Permission denied (publickey)
I've followed all documentation and repeated the steps over and over but cannot seem to get this to work.

[samwhillance]

If you're using Windows, use PuTTYgen to generate your keys

[otherchannel]

What if i already have a key named id_rsa.pem in that location that i'm using and that i don't want to overwrite? How then do i use it, please? I generated a key with a new name, but the passwordless login isn't working, so I assume the login is looking at my previous key named id_rsa. All the DO docs just advise to 'use the default'.

[ProgrammingNewbie]

Video looks good, however, what about adding keys to already made droplets? I saw instructions that you cannot do such a task using the control panel. 

Instead:

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

[oszy]

Putty can't ctrl + V to paste the key. How can I just upload the key? Or, is their another way to just manually typing the key?

[JuCkeRGhoSt]

i got this problem when i want to connect from the user1 to user2 , permission denied (public key )

[muralikrishnaboddapadu]

Please show this proccess on windows please