Re: Which Key Is Which?

From: Markus Friedl (msfriedl@cip.informatik.uni-erlangen.de)
Date: 02/14/02

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    From: msfriedl@cip.informatik.uni-erlangen.de (Markus Friedl)
Date: 14 Feb 2002 17:47:50 GMT

    In <fd4f6f51.0202140855.74db7b1a@posting.google.com> os.tony@bridgeagency.com (Tony) writes:

    >running ssh-keygen creates identity.pub and identity
    >running ssh-keygen -t rsa creates id_rsa.pub and id_rsa

    >What command creates id_dsa and how is it different from the other
    >keys?

    NAME
         ssh-keygen - authentication key generation, management and conversion

    ...
         -t type
                 Specifies the type of the key to create. The possible values are
                 ``rsa1'' for protocol version 1 and ``rsa'' or ``dsa'' for proto-
                 col version 2.

    ..

         $HOME/.ssh/identity.pub
                 Contains the protocol version 1 RSA public key for authentica-
                 tion. The contents of this file should be added to
                 $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys on all machines where the user wishes
                 to log in using RSA authentication. There is no need to keep the
                 contents of this file secret.

         $HOME/.ssh/id_dsa
                 Contains the protocol version 2 DSA authentication identity of
                 the user. This file should not be readable by anyone but the us-
                 er. It is possible to specify a passphrase when generating the
                 key; that passphrase will be used to encrypt the private part of
                 this file using 3DES. This file is not automatically accessed by
                 ssh-keygen but it is offered as the default file for the private
                 key. ssh(1) will read this file when a login attempt is made.

         $HOME/.ssh/id_dsa.pub
                 Contains the protocol version 2 DSA public key for authentica-
                 tion. The contents of this file should be added to
                 $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys on all machines where the user wishes
                 to log in using public key authentication. There is no need to
                 keep the contents of this file secret.