Ubuntu – SSH via Public Key Authentication for NIS Users

authenticationnispublic-keysshUbuntu

I'm experimenting with using NIS for centralizing the user management for a network of approx 20 servers.

I've got an NIS client and server working, and can ssh to the client machine and successfully log in, but only using a password. I'd like to be able to use public key authentication – how might I do this?

Best Answer

Sorry, AFAIK you can't distribute ssh keys over NIS - they live in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. So NFS-mounted homedirs would do it. Or you could set up replication (presumably of just .ssh directories or others you choose) using something like unison.

Related Solutions

SSH Authentication – How to Make SSH Fail Rather Than Prompt for Password

For OpenSSH there is BatchMode, which in addition to disabling password prompting, should disable querying for passphrase(s) for keys.

BatchMode

If set to “yes”, passphrase/password querying will be disabled. This option is useful in scripts and other batch jobs where no user is present to supply the password. The argument must be “yes” or “no”. The default is “no”.

Sample usage:

ssh -oBatchMode=yes -l <user> <host> <dostuff>

SSH Authentication – Use Only Password and Ignore SSH Key

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.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

SSH Authentication – How to Make SSH Fail Rather Than Prompt for Password

SSH Authentication – Use Only Password and Ignore SSH Key

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