Cloning ubuntu 14 setup

[worksmarter]

I followed this thread reply http://forums.sentora.org/showthread.php?tid=4307 which is the only reply
(not Many Members have explained)
I don't know how to use encrypted keys. I'm trying to learn this stuff... I am a beginner forced into early retirement due to a work accident, so to keep myself occupied i have turned to sentora.. not looking to be the next bill gates. just wanna run a web server from home to host a few freiends websites +

I can imagine you get fed up with the same questions being asked over & over again
Believe me i do search the forum first and try to wade through the mine field of posts and threads.
and also search on google which can be even more painful
and have then been accuse of hijacking other members threads. which is not my intention.

Look into using public and private keys to authenticate your log in to your server. This is the google search for Using private and public keys to log into a server using ssh
.
https://www.google.com/search?q=using+pu...e&ie=UTF-8

What this allows is two fold, mainly you can log into your server as root and have the key and all communications between your PC and the server be encrypted - (stopping a man in the middle attack that can snatch your login credentials when you log in in plain text as you are with a username and password.) This also allow you to turn off in your SSH configuration file standard username/password log in.

Once you have set up SSH to use keys, you can have pagent or kagent run on your PC and have WinSCP Putty Kitty or whatever program you are using to communicate with your server work in an automated fashion - read up on what pagent or kagent is for... Pagent will run your certificate in the background and allow you to log in via SSH without you personally having to enter anything. I would also recommend you use something like mRemoteNG for your SSH command line interface. It plays nicely with pagent and will allow you to log in to your server with only storing your user name (root or a lower username) and having pagent inject the proper key to log in with. - Makes working in bash a one click matter.

As is mentioned by TGates, you should only allow root login for temporary administration and then turn it off. You can also make a pair of keys for a lower privileged user to then sudo to root - this works for most cases and is the right way to do things. This allows you to turn off "Login as Root" in your SSH config file. The only thing you might need to have the root user log in to your server is if you are manipulating files in WinSCP that need root permissions. Working on the command line, 9 times out of 10, logging in as a lesser user and sudo'ing to root will work and is the safe and right way to work on your server. Again I use in Windows mRemotNG as a command line connection to run instructions on the server.

Google around. Follow some tutorials, it is not that hard if you can just follow instructions.

As for cloning your setup to an SSD - I still maintain you should just clone the entire drive you are already using to the new SSD. With all of the modifications you have made, if any of them are not contained in the folders mentioned by Me. B, you might wreck your install or have to track down issues you have already solved.