Passwordless ssh login not with disabled direct console root login

Question

We have the centralized server which has passwordless SSH configured to access other Linux servers within our environment. The issue we are facing is that when we disable root direct console access on Linux servers then passwordless SSH doesn't work. It asks for the password.

Is there any workaround for this so our passwordless SSH works with the disabled direct console root login. The following file is where I am adding the no option.

/etc/ssh/sshd_config:

PermitRootLogin no

Answer 1

Completely rewritten answer as I think I misunderstood what you're wanting to do.

If you want to allow public-key authentication to the root user, but not password based authentication, you need to set:

PermitRootLogin prohibit-password

Setting it to no prevents all logins entirely.

Answer 2

I normally use this configuration:

PermitRootLogin yes
PasswordAuthentication no

With also:

RSAAuthentication yes
PubkeyAuthentication yes
AuthorizedKeysFile      .ssh/authorized_keys
ChallengeResponseAuthentication no
GSSAPIAuthentication no

Then in .ssh/authorized_keys I have a list of the public SSH keys of the clients that should be allowed to have access, and no password will be prompted.