[9fans] unix rsa-key with passphrase vs. p9(p)

[Rudolf Sykora]

I now see that 9 ssh-agent is really only to deal with passphrases of
the dsa/rsa keys.

Well, I seem to be wrong again. And have more questions...

In linux, ssh-agent takes care about an (optional) passphrase which
was used to cypher
the public (and perhaps also private, I believe) keys (so that eg the
admin can't abuse these)
generated by ssh-keygen; these keys are usually stored under $HOME/.ssh.

What do I have to do in order to use "9 ssh-agent" (which uses
factotum) when I have
the keys already generated (and their public parts distributed) by
linux's ssh-keygen?
(Ie I have id_rsa and id_rsa.pub in .ssh; and I use a passphrase.)

Particularly, there is some information given in p9p's rsa(1):
----------------
Convert existing Unix SSH version 2 keys instead of generat-
ing new ones:

cd $HOME/.ssh
pemdecode 'DSA PRIVATE KEY' id_dsa | asn12dsa >dsa2
pemdecode 'RSA PRIVATE KEY' id_rsa | asn12rsa >rsa2

Load those keys into factotum:

cat rsa1 rsa2 dsa2 | 9p write -l factotum/ctl
----------------

but my keys are protected with a passphrase, so these commands do not
directly work. What must I do?

Finally, is there any reason to prefer the factotum way rather than the linux's
way just with ssh-keygen (with a passphrase) + ssh-copy-id + (linux's)
ssh-agent?

Thanks!
Ruda

[Charles Forsyth]

Post by Rudolf Sykora
Finally, is there any reason to prefer the factotum way rather than the linux's
way just with ssh-keygen (with a passphrase) + ssh-copy-id + (linux's)
ssh-agent?

All my keys are stored in several secstores ... on the net, not on my local
machine.
This is even better than having lots of $HOME/.ssh files on every machine,
although of course for Linux purposes, I have some of those as well.

[Stephen Wiley]

or if you're hot air balloon to the cloud breaks....

what if that cloud machine breaks, you have to drive out to get the
keys to all your machines back?

[Charles Forsyth]

It isn't just one "cloud machine", and includes several servers that I own,
and virtual servers that I lease,
and my Internet connections are usually good; if they are not, the machines
I'd otherwise connect to outside
the house aren't accessible anyway, so I don't need the keys.

[hiro]

what if that cloud machine breaks, you have to drive out to get the
keys to all your machines back?