Re: OpenSSH: which public keys are required/recommended?

From: Richard E. Silverman (slade@shore.net)
Date: 03/28/02 

From: slade@shore.net (Richard E. Silverman)
Date: 27 Mar 2002 22:23:05 -0500

>>>>> "DM" == Dimitri Maziuk <dima@127.0.0.1> writes:

    DM> <Curious> We have a bunch of admin scripts that run via ssh from a
    DM> central server (cron jobs). I wonder what would've happened if I
    DM> didn't test the upgrade & generate missing RSA keys. Would those
    DM> cron jobs just sit there waiting for "yes or no" until cron run
    DM> queue overflowed (or server's process table, whichever comes
    DM> first) a few days later? </Curious>

Generally, a cron job would have neither a tty nor an X display available,
and so the user query about connecting despite an unverified host key
would fail, causing ssh to abort immediately. In any event, it's best for
such jobs to set BatchMode=yes, so that ssh will fail immediately if it
finds it would otherwise ask the user about something, rather than rely on
secondary failures like this. 

-- 
  Richard Silverman
  slade@shore.net