Ssh – Add authentication keys to dropbear ssh

As already mentioned by pulegium, any generic configuration management software like Puppet, Chef, Bcfg2 or cfengine could accomplish the task.

Since the authorized_keys file is not that complicated, you could also use rsync or a (D)SCM like git or hg to manage this file. You have the "master" file on one of your servers and serve it via rsync/git/hg/…. On every other server you run a cron job which periodically retrieves the master copy (if it was changed) and copies it to the correct local location. Heck, this would even work with pure HTTP or FTP.

The bottom line is: Have one "master" copy of your authorized_keys file and update it. Let the "clients" (the computers, which should have the current authorized_keys file) fetch it from your master server and deploy it locally.

Try ssh -o PasswordAuthentication=yes -o PreferredAuthentications=keyboard-interactive,password -o PubkeyAuthentication=no host.example.org

In ssh v2, keyboard-interactive is another way to say "password". The -o PubkeyAuthentication=no option instructs the client not to attempt key pair authentication.

In addition, the PasswordAuthentication=yes option is to override any previously configured ssh options that may have disabled it.