OpenSSH's ssh-keygen sets the mode of ~/.ssh to 700, unlike "Classic" ssh, which set it to 755. I've noticed a couple of problems: If your home directory is on an NFS server which maps user root from clients to nobody (typical "safe" setup), sshd, which runs as root, will find itself without the ability to read that user's .ssh/authorized_keys file. This can be worked around by running as that user via setuid while checking the file, but that won't work on kerberized NFS or other network volumes which require a security token of some sort instead of blindly trusting the client machine to authenticate users. This is a drag. Also, since your public key live in ~/.ssh, it seems unfortunate that other users can no longer get to it. Minor drag. I'm wondering why it was deemed necessary to be fascist with the directory rather than selectively fascist about the files in it. -Fred Wilfredo S?nchez, wsanchez at apple.com Open Source Engineering Lead Apple Computer, Inc., Core Operating System Group 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 94086, 408.974-5174