While there is nothing wrong per se with having password authentication in an ssh connection, for automated connections you will want to have a keypair generated and distributed. Something like the instructions found at http://sial.org/howto/openssh/publickey-auth/ Note that simply having the keys for your user ID does NOT preclude password authentication; to do so, you will have to configure your ssh daemon to disallow password authentication (or allow keyed authentication only; I forget how OpenSSH does it, it's been so long since I've had to set it up from scratch). On a related note, you will probably want to disallow root to log in via ssh; this is a configurable option in OpenSSH's config file. Also, you should disallow telnet and plain ftp connections, if you're looking to lock down your box.

While there is nothing wrong per se with having password authentication in an ssh connection, for automated connections you will want to have a keypair generated and distributed. Something like the instructions found at http://sial.org/howto/openssh/publickey-auth/ Note that simply having the keys for your user ID does NOT preclude password authentication; to do so, you will have to configure your ssh daemon to disallow password authentication (or allow keyed authentication only; I forget how OpenSSH does it, it's been so long since I've had to set it up from scratch). On a related note, you will probably want to disallow root to log in via ssh; this is a configurable option in OpenSSH's config file. Also, you should disallow telnet and plain ftp connections, if you're looking to lock down your box.