I have too many machines floating around, some virtual, some physical, and they’re getting added and removed semi-frequently as I play around with different tools/try out ideas. One recurring pain point is I have no easy way to manage SSH keys around them, and it’s a pain to deal with adding/removing/cycling keys. I know I can use AuthorizedKeysCommand
on sshd_config to make the system fetch a remote key for validation, I know I could theoretically publish my pub key to github or alike, but I’m wondering if there’s something more flexible/powerful where I can manage multiple users (essentially roles) such that each machine can be assigned a role and automatically allow access accordingly?
I’ve seen Keyper before, but the container haven’t been updated for years, and the support discord owner actively kicks everyone from the server, even after asking questions.
Is there any other solution out there that would streamline this process a bit?
I did not know -J, I rolled my own because I’ve been doing it forever and many of my tricks (non-ssh included) aren’t as easily portable across different os’s.
For some reason ssh-copy-id has been failing for me sometimes lately because it can’t reach the agent, while cat always works, but I never learned much about the user agent, let me look into that now, thanks for the tip!
I think -J is newer and may not work if you have distro versions older than like 5 years (eg. Centos 7 or before). There is a less convenient syntax that does the same thing though
$ ssh -o ProxyCommand="ssh -W %h:%p bastion-host" remote-host
See: https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/ssh-proxy-bastion-proxyjump