topic Re: CMU & SSH in Server Clustering

CMU & SSH

mrogozinski — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 16:17:28 GMT

Will all CMU functionality be available if the root user has a non-empty SSH passphrase? For example, after I created a set of keys with a passphrase, multiple CMU options no longer work because the passphrase needs to be entered. I tried running an ssh-agent to handle the authentication, but I do not know if CMU can communicate with the agent through Java.

Thanks.

Re: CMU & SSH

Chris Holmes (CMU) — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 19:27:38 GMT

Hello,

No, CMU will not work if the root account requires a password or passphrase when using ssh between nodes. Several components in CMU expect to be able to ssh without a password, such as monitoring and pdsh support.

Can you tell us what problem you are trying to solve by adding a passphrase to ssh on a CMU cluster?

Thanks,

--Chris

Re: CMU & SSH

mrogozinski — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 11:07:23 GMT

Chris,

There was no problem that I was trying to solve by creating a set of keys with a non-empty passphrase. I was trying to "harden" the system from a security perspective, although I do realize that there are other and better ways to protect super-user access. Thanks for the response, and I will restore the enmpty keys!

Thanks,

. michael