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Date:      Thu, 14 Aug 2008 18:43:28 +0200
From:      Marian Hettwer <mh@kernel32.de>
To:        Gavin Spomer <spomerg@cwu.EDU>
Cc:        freebsd-stable@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: ssh-keygen between SuSE and FreeBSD
Message-ID:  <b5fbb0b5bbf9841212de677cca102045@localhost>
In-Reply-To: <48A3ED37020000900001C154@hermes.cwu.edu>
References:  <48A3ED37020000900001C154@hermes.cwu.edu>

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Hi Gavin,

On Thu, 14 Aug 2008 08:30:47 -0700, Gavin Spomer <spomerg@cwu.EDU> wrote:
>> 
> 
> Uh, not sure. Head spinning now. ;)
> 
> 1. I have a Mac, SuSE server and a FreeBSD server.
> 2. I can ssh from my Mac to SuSE server without having to type in my
> password.
> 3. I can ssh from my Mac to FreeBSD server without having to type in my
> password.
> 4. I can do #2 and #3 above because I ran "ssh-keygen -t rsa" on my Mac
> and copied the id_rsa.pub to my ~/.ssh/authorized_keys files on the SuSE
> and FreeBSD servers.
> 5. I ran the same "ssh-keygen -t rsa" on the SuSE server and copied the
> id_rsa.pub to the FreeBSD.
> 6. I canNOT ssh from the SuSE server to the FreeBSD server withOUT typing
> in my password.
> 7. When I ssh from SuSE server to FreeBSD server, I get prompted:
>       Enter passphrase for key '/home/myusername/.ssh/id_rsa':
>From your Suse, try to run the ssh commando with "-v" or even -vv or -vvv
to get debugging output.
If you can't figure out what the debugging output wants to tell you, send
it to the list.
But complete, copy 'n' paste please :)

I'm not quite sure right now why you're using rsa keys. I'm always using
dsa keys (ssh-keygen -t dsa). It comes to my mind, that rsa keys are for
ssh version 1, while dsa keys are for ssh version 2.
But I could be wrong here ;)
No man ssh handy right now, sorry.

> 8. I want to be able to ssh from SuSE server to FreeBSD server because I
> want to run scp via a cron job.
>
understood.
 
> I noticed you made a distinction between password and passphrase. Could
> you please explain the difference?
>
Well, when you generate a rsa or dsa key, you get asked to enter a
passphrase for that key.
So a passphrase is basically the password to your ssh key.
While the password is the real password of the local user you're trying to
be. Like ssh foo@bar, the password would be the password of the user foo at
host bar.
And since everybody likes to know wether someone is talking about the
"password" of a ssh key or the password of a local user, you say passphrase
to keys and password to local users.
That's how I would explain it :))

Cheers,
Marian




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