SSH Keys

[Richard Munn]

We are still using HPSIM V5.3 on Windows but have a large number of Linux managed systems. To run tasks on the managed systems we cannot use root but must use an ordinary account which does have sudo access.

To make things easier I created a ssh RSA key pair (null passphrase) and propagated this to the linux host for the user in the audthorized_keys file. On the CMS I can simply type ssh user@target and it just logs in as expected. But if I then try to run a task it will work if I supply credentials i.e. the password for the user on the target but if I get rid of that all I get is SSH public key authentication failed for user ???? Then please run mxagentconfig -a.

Does this mean that SIM will not support using key authentication or will this only be done if mxagentconfig is run? mxagentconfig tries to alter sshd_config which requires some major CM effort.

I assumed that I could just put the keys in the target user .ssh file and SIM would either just use it or you could tell SIM to use key authentication without going though a reconfig of SSH or am I missing something here?

[Richard Munn]

Well I answered my own question.
It seems that for whatever reason ssh uses RSA keys for interactive login but the task manager uses DSA keys. So for both to work you need both in the managed hosts authorized_keys file. I did that and everything works as it should.

This does not seem very consistent but it works.

[Richard Munn]

Use DSA keys for tasks and RSA keys for interactive SSH.