Re: ssh and .rhosts or .shosts

From: Robert Lawhead (news0000.5.unixguru_at_spamgourmet.com)
Date: 04/19/05 

Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 11:42:08 -0700

Dave Uhring wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Apr 2005 16:19:00 +0100, Richard Skelton wrote:
>
>
>># cat id_rsa.pub > $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys
>
>
> Ummmm, I think you mean
>
> $ scp id_rsa.pub server:$HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys
>
Interesting... I've always used .ssh/authorized_keys2 for ssh2
keys like rsa and dsa, and thought that .ssh/authorized_keys was
only for rsa1 keys. However the ssh man page references
.ssh/authorized_keys for rsa and dsa keys; YET trussing sshd for
an ssh2 connection I see indeed that it is .ssh/authorized_keys2
that is checked. Moreover, if sshd is only serving protocol 2
and .ssh/authorized_keys2 is absent and .ssh/authorized_keys
includes the ssh2 keys, public key authentication fails. This
leads me to believe that the man page is confusing at best.
I'd suggest using only ssh2 & putting your keys in ssh/authorized_keys2.
None of this matters though for HostBasedAuthentication. What
matters there is that the respective hosts' (not users) public
keys are known to the respective hosts
(usually in /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts(2)).

- Bob

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