Hi,

Tron:

On the remote server you'll need to add your PUBLIC key to $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys. Keep the private key on the source server, this and the public key should be stored in $HOME/.ssh/identity & $HOME/.ssh/identity.pub if using RSA keys or $HOME/.ssh/id_dsa & $HOME/.ssh/id_dsa.pub if using DSA keys.

It could be that your provider has disabled the use of keys (doubt it). If you can look at the sshd configuration file then you may be able to figure it out look at /etc/sshd/sshd_config (could be in a different location though). Have a search for it -

find / -type f -name sshd_config -print

Are you chroot'd to your home directory or can you 'roam' about the system?

Another thing to consider would be the SSH version in use, is it OpenSSH or a Commercial version? There are differences in the way they store keys unfortunatley :/.

Try running -

ssh -V

to get the version. The above method of using the keys works for OpenSSH, the commercial version (ssh.com) is only slightly different.

When you run the script, where is it run from? Is it running as a cron job now or are you running it manually? Are you sure it's erroring while trying to execute the tar command - i.e. have you made the script executable (is it erroring because of this)?

Also, as no paths are specified in the script, you would need to execute it in the directory you want to archive. You need write permissions here, otherwise the tar file can't be created... (I'd assume that as they are your sites you should have write access :P).

Shawn:

Fair point about the keys, you'd generally want to use DSA keys with version 2 of the SSH protocol however. There are diffences between RSA keys generated for v1 or v2 of the SSH protocol also.

Nice copying and pasting from the man pages btw :P.

--Bovine.