At 08:28 PM 1/19/99 , you said something like....
:
:>Ok, maybe I'm missing something, but why would you NOT want to
:>password protect your host key? Isn't that something you WOULD
:>want to passphrase protect?
the hostkey.pub is the key that automatically gets placed in the
$HOME/.ssh/known_hosts of the connecting machine.
when you connect for the first time to a ssh server, this key gets placed
in $HOME/.ssh/known_hosts. every subsequent time you connect, that entry is
checked against the server's hostkey to authenticate it's identity. if the
hostkey changes on the server machine (from a reload or someone
masquerading as the server), you will get an error warning and a prompt to
proceed.
when you execute 'make install', the hostkey and hostkey.pub are generated
automatically with no passphrase. if you have to execute 'ssh-keygen' to
create hostkeys for a machine, do not assign a passphrase.
