Remotely rebooting linux mint server(SSH): permission denied (needed to enter password manually in the server)

Question

I have a simple ssh server setup, an old Macbook air (XFCE Mint). I'm new in the topic and would like to try out some of the basic commands. tried rebooting the server by reboot from my client, however i needed to enter the password manually on the server before being able to re-log in from my client but i got `Permission denied (publickey).

Edit: I had a public key installed and had no problem on logging in whatsoever. It is after i remotely rebooted my system, i needed to manually enter the password in the server machine.

Just wondering is there a way to remotely log in without having to enter the password manually in the server after the reboot?

Answer 1

When you say you "needed to enter the password manually on the server", was that a disk encryption passphrase?

If so, storing that on the server itself in plaintext would defeat the purpose of the encryption. And an old MacBook Air probably won't have any usable TPM chip either.

Debian has a dropbear-initramfs package that allows the system to accept incoming SSH connections while still in initramfs phase of the boot procedure, to allow entering the disk encryption passphrase remotely in a secure manner. Since Mint is a relative of Debian, it might have the same package available too.

If you use dropbear-initramfs, you should read /usr/share/doc/dropbear-initramfs/README.initramfs after installing the package, and then use the instructions in that file to configure the package.

Remember to update your initramfs (with sudo update-initramfs -u -k all) after making any dropbear-initramfs configuration changes, or else the changes won't take effect until your next kernel upgrade or other initramfs-affecting security patch!