On Fri, 24 Feb 2017, Erik Lane wrote:

> Is there any reason why the public and private keys need to be different on
> the different computers?

Erik,

   Nope.

> It seems like you could create them on one computer and copy paste to the
> relevant files to make them both the same.

   When you run ssh-keygen it does a bit more than create the private and
public id_* files. What I (and probably many others) do is to use the same
passphrase with ssh-keygen on every host. This lets me use the same
passphrase regardless of which host I'm currently using.

   As an aside, I learned something else interesting yesterday. I have
ssh-agent running on all hosts. After running ssh-keygen on the laptop I ran
ssh-add. Saw nothing on the monitor but the bash prompt. However, when I
then tested with 'ssh <desktop>' I was instantly connected; no passphrase
necessary. And, as I copyied data and applications to the laptop with scp no
passphrase was necessary with each invocation. As I have a rather long
passphrase this is a huge time saver and a really kewel feature.

> I have had a couple instances where I actually needed to create the keys
> as root as well. I was using rsync with sudo, (and the files were owned by
> a different user for Owncloud) so I had to have root create the keys,
> since that was what would be running the ssh transfer. Well, there might
> have been other options, I really don't know, but setting it up that way
> took care of it for me. Once I got it working I stopped looking for other
> ways to do it. :)

   Never used owncloud, but I would think that if the owner and you are part
of the same group you could copy files (you're not writing to them) owned by
another user.

Rich
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