ssh certificate usage

Hans postbus111 at gmail.com
Wed Apr 28 04:49:19 EST 2010


I am trying to find out how I can use the new self-signed certificates
So what I read in the man pages, it should be something like:

client:
1) ssh-keygen -f ca_rsa	  # generate a ssh keypair for use as a certificate

Server(s):
2) make sure your /etc/ssh/sshd_config has TrustedUserCAKeys assigned
TrustedUserCAKeys  /etc/ssh/sshcakeys       # or whatever name or
location you like

3) edit /etc/ssh/sshcakeys and add the contents of ca_rsa.pub in it

Client:
4) for a user generate a certificate of its public key
  ssh-keygen -s ca_rsa -I keyid -n user id_rsa.pub
This will generate an id_rsa-cert.pub certificate file

Client:
5) ssh user at server        # connect to server using the certificate

Is this correct or did I miss something ?

Is it also possible to disable the plain public key authentication and
only accept certificate authentication (can't find an option for this
in sshd_config)

thx

Hans


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