ssh: The authenticity of host 'hostname' can't be established

Question

Depending on your ssh client, you can set the StrictHostKeyChecking option to no on the command line, and/or send the key to a null known_hosts file. You can also set these options in your config file, either for all hosts or for a given set of IP addresses or host names.

ssh -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no

EDIT

As @IanDunn notes, there are security risks to doing this. If the resource you're connecting to has been spoofed by an attacker, they could potentially replay the destination server's challenge back to you, fooling you into thinking that you're connecting to the remote resource while in fact they are connecting to that resource with your credentials. You should carefully consider whether that's an appropriate risk to take on before altering your connection mechanism to skip HostKeyChecking.

Reference.

Old question that deserves a better answer.

You can prevent interactive prompt without disabling StrictHostKeyChecking (which is insecure).

Incorporate the following logic into your script:

if [ -z "$(ssh-keygen -F $IP)" ]; then
  ssh-keyscan -H $IP >> ~/.ssh/known_hosts
fi

It checks if public key of the server is in known_hosts. If not, it requests public key from the server and adds it to known_hosts.

In this way you are exposed to Man-In-The-Middle attack only once, which may be mitigated by:

• ensuring that the script connects first time over a secure channel
• inspecting logs or known_hosts to check fingerprints manually (to be done only once)

To disable (or control disabling), add the following lines to the beginning of /etc/ssh/ssh_config...

Host 192.168.0.*
   StrictHostKeyChecking=no
   UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null

Options:

• The Host subnet can be * to allow unrestricted access to all IPs.
• Edit /etc/ssh/ssh_config for global configuration or ~/.ssh/config for user-specific configuration.

See http://linuxcommando.blogspot.com/2008/10/how-to-disable-ssh-host-key-checking.html

Similar question on superuser.com - see https://superuser.com/a/628801/55163

Make sure ~/.ssh/known_hosts is writable. That fixed it for me.

The best way to go about this is to use 'BatchMode' in addition to 'StrictHostKeyChecking'. This way, your script will accept a new hostname and write it to the known_hosts file, but won't require yes/no intervention.

ssh -o BatchMode=yes -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no [email protected] "uptime"