[chef] Re: Re: Re: RE: private keys

[Nico Kadel-Garcia < >]

The "users" cookbook doesn't support private SSH keys well. data bags well. It stores them in unencrypted data bags and has no leverage for activating keys without setting all characteristics for that account. Coupled with its insistence on creating and overriding $HOME/.ssh ownership and it's quite unsuitable for many locked down environments where users should *not* have write access to their authorized_keys. That especially includes public keys for git or svn+ssh access.

Nico Kadel-Garcia

Email: n ">

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On Sep 2, 2015, at 13:28, "Fabien Delpierre" < "> > wrote:

I don't know if it's a great idea to put private keys in data bags, even encrypted data bags, but if it fits your use case, the users cookbook definitely supports private keys, it's just not documented for whatever reason.
https://github.com/opscode-cookbooks/users/blob/master/providers/manage.rb#L131-L141

On Wed, Sep 2, 2015 at 12:54 PM, K. Adam Wolfe < " target="_blank"> > wrote:

Strange.  I see the 'users' and 'ssh-keys' cookbooks out there, but they only seem to deal with authorized_keys file and pub keys, not managing the private keys which is where I'm getting stuck.

I thought creating a template from a databag with the priv key in it would suffice, but I'm having issues populating a file's content with the item in the databag.  My assumption is I am going about this in a completely wrong way.

On 09/02/2015 11:31 AM, Kevin Keane Subscription wrote:

Generally, with SSH keys you want to generate them where the private key is used. I would use a bash resource (assuming the node is Linux/Unix, of course) to call ssh-keygen. Have it put the private key into the correct place.

You can then copy the public key into an attribute on the node, and use that attribute in turn on the destination nodes.

Of course you can also use scp to copy the public key where it is needed, but that would mean more shell scripting and less chef.

Kevin Keane

The NetTech

http://www.4nettech.com

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-----Original message-----
From: K. Adam Wolfe  " target="_blank">< >
Sent: Wednesday 2nd September 2015 8:46
To: " target="_blank">
Subject: [chef] private keys

Hello, all.

What is the opscode-recommended method for managing ssh keys  - private 
keys in particular?

My aim is to create the rsa keypairs on source nodes, then have the pub 
key added to another user's authorized_keys on destination nodes; 
preferably in databags / encrypted.  Ideally having unique keypairs for 
each source node.