Installing RSA Keys for Developers

If the client device doesn't already have a .ssh/ directory in the user's home folder, create it and give it the permissions SSH expects

$ mkdir ~/.ssh/
$ chmod 700 ~/.ssh/

From that directory, generate an RSA keypair

~/.ssh$ ssh-keygen -t rsa

You will be asked for a filename for the key (use ~/.ssh/id_rsa unless you have a reason not to) and a passphrase. A passphrase encrypts your private key so that if it's ever compromised (say, someone steals your laptop), we have time to revoke your public key on i2u2-wiki before an attacker can decrypt it and access the server.

Please set a passphrase; I recommend that you store it in an open-source password manager like KeePassX. You will typically only need to enter it once per session.

The ssh-keygen command will create the two files

~/.ssh/id_rsa
~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

on the developer's computer. The former is the private key; the latter (.pub) is the public key.

Now, transfer the public key to i2u2-wiki

$ scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub your_login@i2u2-wiki.crc.nd.edu:/tmp/id_rsa.your_name.pub

Replace your_login with your login to i2u2-wiki, and replace your_name with some form of your name so that I can identify the file easily.

Finally, login to i2u2-wiki add your public key to the git user's authorized_keys file there (or ask me to do it)

your_login@i2u2-wiki:~$ cat /tmp/id_rsa.your_name.pub >> ~git/.ssh/authorized_keys

You are now authorized to access i2u2-wiki as the git user over SSH from the computer that contains the private key file generated above. If you'd like to develop from multiple machines, repeat the above process for each one.

-- Main.JoelG - 2017-09-18

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