Users Guide

• When you enable all the three authentication methods, password authentication is the backup method when the RSA
method fails.
• The files known_hosts and known_hosts2 are generated when a user tries to SSH using version 1 or version 2, respectively.
Enabling SSH Authentication by Password
Authenticate an SSH client by prompting for a password when attempting to connect to the Dell Networking system. This setup
is the simplest method of authentication and uses SSH version 1.
To enable SSH password authentication, use the following command.
• Enable SSH password authentication.
CONFIGURATION mode
ip ssh password-authentication enable
Example of Enabling SSH Password Authentication
To view your SSH configuration, use the show ip ssh command from EXEC Privilege mode.
Dell(conf)#ip ssh server enable
% Please wait while SSH Daemon initializes ... done.
Dell(conf)#ip ssh password-authentication enable
Dell#sh ip ssh
SSH server : enabled.
Password Authentication : enabled.
Hostbased Authentication : disabled.
RSA Authentication : disabled.
Using RSA Authentication of SSH
The following procedure authenticates an SSH client based on an RSA key using RSA authentication. This method uses SSH
version 2.
1 On the SSH client (UNIX machine), generate an RSA key, as shown in the following example.
2 Copy the public key id_rsa.pub to the Dell Networking system.
3 Disable password authentication if enabled.
CONFIGURATION mode
no ip ssh password-authentication enable
4 Enable RSA authentication in SSH.
CONFIGURATION mode
ip ssh rsa-authentication enable
5 Install user’s public key for RSA authentication in SSH.
EXEC Privilege mode
ip ssh rsa-authentication my-authorized-keys flash://public_key
Example of Generating RSA Keys
admin@Unix_client#ssh-keygen -t rsa
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/admin/.ssh/id_rsa):
/home/admin/.ssh/id_rsa already exists.
Overwrite (y/n)? y
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in /home/admin/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /home/admin/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
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