Generating keys

This is a tutorial for creating keys for use with pony

Generating Keys

The command:

ssh-kegen -t dsa

will generate a DSA key pair that we can use to authenticate ourselves.

After pressing enter you'll be asked for a file location, with a default name of id_dsa located in your ~/.ssh/ directory. It's a good idea to give it a useful name (for our purpose, 'pony' will do). You'll also be asked for an optional pass phrase for the key. You can skip this by pressing enter if you like.

You'll now have two files, 'pony' and 'pony.pub' in your ~/.ssh/ directory:

-rw------- 1 switch switch  736 Dec  7 04:46 pony
-rw-r--r-- 1 switch switch  602 Dec  7 04:46 pony.pub

Notice that 'pony.pub' is world readable, but the (private) pony key is only readable by you, the owner. Feel free to write your public key down on your wiki user page, your tax returns or your favorite bathroom stall.

Configuring Your SSH

We've got our keys, but we need to let SSH know which hosts we want to use what keys with. We'll need to edit the user config file for ssh, located in '~/.ssh/config' (If this file doesn't already exist, go ahead and create it there).

Configuring Pony

You'll need some help for this next part, specifically someone listed on pony's sudo list. Some guy does some stuff for you