The EnFuzion root software provides powerful capabilities for managing EnFuzion nodes. To fully utilize these capabilities, the EnFuzion root needs to be able to login to the node computer under the user account that was used to install the EnFuzion node software on that system.
EnFuzion supports several methods for remote access to EnFuzion nodes. These methods are industry standard protocols for remote login: ssh, rsh and telnet. In addition, users can provide their own method for use by EnFuzion.
The recommended method for remote access is ssh, since it provides the highest level of security and is the easiest to use. The section below provides more details on configuring a Linux/Unix system for use as an EnFuzion node. For configuration of remote access using rsh or telnet, refer to instructions provided by your Linux/Unix system.
To use ssh, EnFuzion requires that the node allows a login from the root system without requesting a password. This method enhances security over the telnet based login, since no clear text passwords are sent over the network and the root is authenticated and authorized.
The ssh protocol uses a public key method. The root generates a public and a private key. The private key is kept secret on the root, while the public key is stored on the node and is used at the login time to authenticate the root.
The procedure to generate the keys on the root and store the public key on the node is described below. It must be performed for each EnFuzion node system that is running a Linux/Unix operating system.
On the node, the sshd daemon must be running
On the root, generate keys. This step is done only once. If the keys have been already generated, you can skip the step below.
# generate keys, store public key to ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub
# use empty passphrase
ssh-keygen -d -b 1024 -C <local_user>@<root_host.root_domain>
On the root, copy the public key to the node system.
scp ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub <node_user>@<node_host.node_domain>:
On the node, add the public key to the list of authorized keys. Authorized keys are usually stored in file ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. On some systems, ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2 must be used instead.
mkdir .ssh
chmod 0755 .ssh
cat id_dsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
chmod 0644 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
On the root, test the configuration, ssh should login immediately without requesting a password:
ssh <node_user>@<node_host>.<node_domain>