OpenMosix - Part 8: Using SSH Keys Instead Of Passwords

One of the things that you'll notice with openMosixview is that if you want to change the speed sliders of a remote node, you will have some trouble. This is because openMosixview uses SSH to remotely set the speed on the node. What you need to do is set up passwordless SSH authentication using public/private keys.

This is just a quick walk-through on how to do that, for a much more detailed explanation on public/private key SSH authentication, see our tutorial in the GNU/Linux Section.

First, generate your SSH public/private key-pair:

ssh-keygen -t dsa

Second, copy the public key into the authorized keys file. Since your home directory is shared between nodes, you only need to do this on one node:

cat ~/.ssh/*.pub >>~/.ssh/authorized_keys

However, for root, you will have to do this manually for each node (replace Node# with each node individually):

cat ~/.ssh/*.pub >>/mfs/Node#/root/.ssh/authorized_keys

After this, you have to start SSH-agent, to cache your password so you only need to type it once. Add the following to your .bash_profile or .profile:

ssh-agent $SHELL

Now each time after you login, just type ‘ ssh-add' and supply your password once. By following this you will be able to login passwordless to any of the nodes, and the sliders in openMosixview should work perfectly for you. Next: Interesting Ideals: Distributed Password Cracking & Encoding MP3s