Hello bgi,

Automatic authentication is safer that password authentication if you use a passphrase for the identity file and is the preferred method by experienced admins. To have automatic authentication and passphrase working toghether you must:

1. Generate the pair private-public key with passphrase and
2. use ssh-agent and ssh-add. Once you have authenticated against the "agent" all the connections will go without any additional passphrase typing.

Also, hide all the connection parameters inside a section of your ~/.ssh/config file. Something like this:

...

Host rbeo
user otheruser
Hostname localhost
Port 2048
IdentityFile /home/pp2/.ssh/ursu

...
[download]

This is the recommended way when working with GRID::Machine (rather than giving a lot of parameters in the call to the constructor)

Hope it helps

Casiano