Cat: read error: Is a directory

[mehdi47]

hello everyone
so I was trying to install ssh tunnel on my router so I can use it as a VPN
I made a ssh key in /root/.ssh
but when I want to open the file cat .ssh/
I get this error:
cat: read error: Is a directory
thx for everyone's help

[psherman]

that is indeed a directory. You should have a key file that is inside that directory.

What do you see when you issue:

ls -al ~/.ssh/

[mehdi47]

root@OpenWrt:~# ls -al ~/.ssh/
drwx------    2 root     root           296 Jan 23 00:34 .
drwxr-xr-x    1 root     root           224 Jan 23 00:34 ..
-rw-------    1 root     root          1823 Jan 23 01:04 id_rsa
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           394 Jan 23 01:04 id_rsa.pub

[psherman]

looks like you indeed have files in there. You can review the contents of those files by specifying the full file names. For example:

cat `~/.ssh/id_rsa

[mk24]

To log in to the OpenWrt SSH from a remote client with keys instead of a password:

1. Create a key pair on the client.
2. Copy the contents of the client's public key file (name ends in .pub) to a file named /etc/dropbear/authorized_keys on OpenWrt.
3. Use the private key on the client to open the connection. Remember it is a security best practice that private keys are kept as secret as possible, ideally never leaving the machine that created them.