SSH Key Management
SSH Keys is a way of identifying yourself to an SSH server using cryptography instead of the traditional username and password combination. This method has several advantages over the password based authentication: the passwords are not sent to trough the network, there is no risk for brute force attacks and when using together with the SSH agent it is possible to login to multiple servers without entering your credentials again and again.
At IFCA it is highly reccomended to use SSH Key authentication for accessing the Cluster.
We reccomend the reading of the fantastic Arch Linux SSH Keys guide for more details. Some instructions are provided below though.
SSH Key creation
Windows (PuTTY)
Check this page for more information.
Linux
Check this page for more information.
Upload key
Once you have your key ready, you must install it on the server you are going to access.
Using ipa
Authentication at IFCA is centralized, meaning that you can install your key centrally at https://ipa.ifca.es/ and use it when accessing any machine at IFCA datacenter trough SSH. To do so log into https://ipa.ifca.es/ and add your SSH key from your account settings menu.
Using the authorized_keys file
You have to access (using SSH and your username and password) to the machine where you want to use your public key and add the contents of your public key file to the .ssh/authorized_keys. If you are using GNU/Linux, you can add it with the following command:
$ ssh-copy-id username@gridui.ifca.es
This will install your ssh public key at Scientific Linux 6 infrastruccture.