Set Up SSH

This guide will walk you through creating an SSH key pair that you will use to access your physical hosts after the OS installation completes. You will include this key pair, along with any other trusted ones, in the initial authorized keys that all hosts will end up having after their installation. You will serve these keys to your physical hosts through your HTTP server.

Fast Forward

If you already have a trusted SSH key pair, expand this box to fast-forward.

  1. From your management environment copy your SSH key pair inside your bootstrap host:

    root@rok-tools:~# scp <PATH_TO_PRIVATE_KEY> root@<IP>:~/.ssh/id_rsa
    root@rok-tools:~# scp <PATH_TO_PUBLIC_KEY> root@<IP>:~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

    Replace <IP> with the IP address of your bootstrap host, and <PATH_TO_PRIVATE_KEY> and PATH_TO_PUBLIC_KEY with the paths to the private and public part of your existing key, respectively. For example:

    root@rok-tools:~# scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa root@192.168.2.10:~/.ssh/id_rsa
    root@rok-tools:~# scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub root@192.168.2.10:~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

  2. Proceed to the Verify section.

What You’ll Need

Procedure

  1. Go to your management environment and connect to your bootstrap host:

    root@rok-tools:~# ssh root@<IP>

    Replace <IP> with the IP address of your bootstrap host, for example:

    root@rok-tools:~# ssh root@192.168.2.10

  2. Create a new SSH key pair without passphrase:

    root@host:~# ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C root@bootstrap -N "" Generating public/private rsa key pair. ...

    Important

    If you already have an SSH key under ~/.ssh/id_rsa it will prompt you to give an alternative path or to overwrite it.

Verify

  1. Ensure that you have an SSH key pair:

    $ ls -la ~/.ssh/id_rsa{,.pub} && echo OK -rw------- 1 root root 3247 Apr 28 23:13 /root/.ssh/id_rsa -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 750 Apr 28 23:13 /root/.ssh/id_rsa.pub OK

Summary

You have successfully created an SSH key pair that you will use to connect to your physical hosts.

What’s Next

The next step is to set up the installation source for your desired OS.