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kumar
Asked: 2016-02-09 23:10:00 +0800 CST

passwordless ssh in VM - weird authorized keys file

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I am trying to setup passwordless ssh to my localhost (itself).

I have host machine PM1 and then I lauch a VM(vm1) using qemu-kvm and logged into VM. Then, I am trying to setup passworless ssh within vm1, so that ssh root@vm1 (from vm1 itself) should log me in without password.

vm1# ssh-copy-id root@vm1

Then

vm1# ssh root@vm1

Now, I can login without password. no issues.

Then I started looking into authorized_keys. /root/.ssh/authorized_keys

Here I find a new entry like:

ssh-rsa <some key> <hostmachine username>@<hostmachine hostname>

how come hostmachine username and hostmachine hostname comes into picture here?? Should n't it be vm machine username @ vm machine hostname?

This looks bit weird.

linux

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The text after the key is just a comment. It is the comment that is added when the key is generated. You can change it to be whatever you want or even remove it. It is there because ssh-copy-id does exactly what it says and just copies the public key to the remote machine.

    This is documented

    Protocol 2 public key consist of: options, keytype, base64-encoded key, comment.

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