About multiple hosts with same hostname

[Rick Jones]

Christian Iversen wrote:
> Hello all
> 
> I have a somewhat annoying problem with OpenSSH. Now, granted, it's 
> certainly not a bug. I'm just wondering what the best course of action is.
> 
> At work, we have multiple customers with machines named "fw0", "fs0", 
> etc. This is all good, since it conforms to a standard naming scheme, so 
>   it's easier to administrate.
> 
> However, when we go to our customers' sites, we often issue commands 
> like "ssh user at fw0", which of course gives out endless warnings about 
> MITM attacks, and essentially makes host keys worthless on the internal 
> customer networks.
> 
> It seems somewhat wrong to me. Isn't there some way to make OpenSSH save 
> the host key using the FQDN instead of just the local part? That would 
> solve this problem. Is there some other commonly accepted way of dealing 
> with this that doesn't involve making all our host names unique?

FQDNs _are_ unique host names.  Or at least they are supposed to be.

So, it would seem that simply saying ssh user at FQDN is going to be the way to go. 
  It has been my experience that if one uses the FQDN that is what will go into 
the file.

> Bonus question: We have 2 storage servers (let's call them storage0 and 
> storage1), and between them they run a floating IP address with a 
> heartbeat-monitored NFS daemon (let's call that nfs0).
> 
> Now, obviously the host key changes whenever there's been a failover, 
> and so again we get this same kind of problem. What to do in this case? 
> Any ideas?

Always ssh to the unique rather than shared name?

rick jones