ssh clarification needed

[Anne Wilson]

On Sunday 04 January 2009 11:26:01 Kevin Kofler wrote:
> Anne Wilson wrote:
> > Is a ssh key specific to a computer, or to a user?  That is, does my key
> > pertain to any box on the lan, as long as I'm the user?  Or is it machine
> > specific - in which case I would think that every user would have the
> > same key, which seems unlikely.  Then again, is it a combination of user
> > and computer, in which case every user needs a specific key on every box
> > he uses (assuming that he may want to ssh to other boxes).
>
> There's 2 kinds of keys:
> * host keys - those are the keys which are on the server, they're generated
> once per server (unless you explicitly regenerate them) and they're what
> the fingerprint you see when connecting to an SSH server the first time
> corresponds to. Those are one per machine (server).
> * authentication keys - those are what you use to log in instead of a
> password. They're one per user and machine unless you explicitly copy the
> private key to a different machine or user account (something you normally
> shouldn't do, but some servers allow you to upload only one public key, so
> you'll have to copy the matching private key around if you want to be able
> to log in from multiple machines).
>
OK, thanks.  That's a lot clearer.  It's what I thought was correct, but I 
needed to be sure.

Anne
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