problem with ssh key - separate users with same uid, group?
 

I'm working with a guy who has given me an account on his Red Hat server. I.e., I can login via SSH. The weird bit is that my account shares a uid and gid with his account. Is this normal or a really bad idea?

The problem I'm having is that I want to put my public key in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the server so that I can login via key pair. I have tried putting it in a variety of places but ssh never attempts to use the key pair for authentication.

I had some confusion at first because my user (sneakyimp) and his user (hisuser) apparently each have their own home directory (/home/sneakyimp and /home/hisuser). I've tried putting my public key in both these places but it doesn't work:
/home/hisuser/.ssh/authorized_keys
/home/sneakyimp/.ssh/authorized_keys

I also tried logging in and putting the key in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys and that doesn't work either.

when I login using ssh sneakyimp@example.com, the prompt and whoami tell me that I am logged in as hisuser.

I've tried to look at the contents of /etc/ssh/sshd_config but I don't have read permission on the file.

Can anyone help me figure out where to put my public key?

Can you please paste the outputs of the following commands?
1. id sneakyimp
2. id hisuser

You may try this also:
1. Change directory(cd) to /home/sneakyimp/.ssh
2. you'll find a file name similar to id_rsa.pub
==> If you dont find a file use ssh-keygen command to generate the keys(you may use a passphrase if you want).
3. Now ssh-copy-id -i id_rsa.pub remote-host-name
==> you can use the remote host name if you have DNS working or you may specify the ip address of the remote-host.
==> "ssh-copy-id -i id_rsa.pub remote-host-name" assumes you are having same username in your system and in your remote system ==> If not you should mention your username(username in remote system) at the beginning of the "remote-host-name" as... ssh-copy-id -i id_rsa.pub xxxxxxx@remote-host-name
here xxxxxxx= username in remote system.
4. You'll be prompted to enter the password assigned to the remote username(xxxxxxx).
5. When you enter a correct password your public key will be copied to the /home/xxxxx/.ssh/authorized_keys.
6. From now, you can login to the remote host without a password.

****Note: Mark this post as helpful,if it helps you.

Here is the output of the commands:

the .ssh stuff just plain does not work -- there are no .ssh directories in either home directory. As I mentioned in my original post, I have tried putting my public key in a variety of locations. I have done this many times on other hosts and it works just fine.

Does it mean..you're not having .ssh directory???

If so...

You can create the .ssh directory & authorized_keys file in it manually.

Can you try this?

Did you execute the ssh-keygen command?

I appreciate your help, but did you actually read my original post? I did in fact create an .ssh directory and I put my public key in there. I am no stranger to this operation. I don't need to generate another keypair because I already have one.

I'm sorry..if my posts made you angry.

Can you please post the output when you execute:

Do you get any permission denied messages?

this is the output:
But, when I try to login, it continues to ask me for my password:
which means that copying this file had no effect. but I had indicated previously that I had attempted to manually place my public key in a variety of locations.

When I us my password to login after running that command, I see that the command has copied not just the public key that I want to copy but others as well to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys (which is the same as /home/sneakyimp/.ssh/authorized_keys).

I created a user with name "remote" on my system & changed the uid & gid to the local user uid & gid.
as you can see it from the below:
When i executed the ssh-copy-id for the first time..and entered the password, i got:
as the home dir of "remote" user had different uid(uid assigned to "remote" when i created the user using useradd). so i changed it to "local" user uid.., using chown command.

After that..ssh-copy-id worked fine.. & i'm able to login without a password prompt.

I can post you the /etc/ssh/ssh_config file content if you want,though i didn't even touched it.

local system os: Fedora16
remote systemos : Fedora17.