[CoLoCo] ssh but kind of a mac question so please forgive

[Michael Hirsch]

On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 4:04 PM, Paul Hummer <paul at eventuallyanyway.com> wrote:
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>> For security reasons I don't want to copy the key. Is there an option to
>> tell it to look for the key on a flash drive? How would I do this?
>>
>
> Are you talking about the public key or the private key?  There's really
> no reason to worry about the security of your public key.  Shoot, you
> can see other people's public key on Launchpad.
>
> The private key, on the other hand, is something you should protect
> well.  If you'd like to put it on a USB key, that's fine.  However, you
> need to tell ssh about it in your local config.
>
> Open (or create and open) ~/.ssh/config and add the following lines,
> substituting the variables in various places.
>
> Host <nickname-of-host>
>  Hostname <ip-address-or-fqdn>
>  User <your-username-on-target-system>
>  IdentityFile </path/toprivate/key>
>
> It's best to review the man-page for ssh-config.  It's got all sorts of
> goodies in it.

For a quick test you can just use "ssd -i /path/to/usbdrive/privatekey
remotehost".

That will use your key from the usb drive to log on to remotehost.

Michael