I hope this helps someone. I was trying to have rsync setup with Dreamhost’s 50GB free backup plan to backup my machine without having to type the password again and having to interfere with it.
So, I did the following:
1. I created the Backup User using the CPanel and once created, logged in using SFTP into the backup user account (it gives you a different account/username).
2. I then created a directory named .ssh in the root of this new account (remember I am logged in sing SFTP)
3. Put my “id_rsa.pub” in this directory and renamed it to “authorized_key”.
By now, I thought things were fine and fired the command:
“rsync -e ssh -av @.dreamhost.com:~/”
Please make sure that you do not generate SSH key with a passphrase and also have right permissions. It needs 700 for the private key.