Hi Friends,
I have been instructed to work on a remote server via ssh for which a key has been sent to me via email. It was actually a private key. So, I copied that key from the email and put it to my desktop in the name "ssh-key." As per the instruction, following is the ssh command to log in to the remote server :

ssh root@<remoteServerName> -i /home/saagar/Desktop/ssh-key

where ssh-key is the file with the content i copied from email. I can succesfully log in to the server.

My question is how this private key method of authentication works..??

I am aware and also used to the conventional method of putting our public key in the authorized_keys list of the remote server's .ssh directory, but not this way. I tried to google, but in vain.
I tried to simulate this in my lan but still it asks for a password....

please help..

It works the same as adding your public key to the remote server.

What they have done is to generate a private key for you, and they have the public key twin of this key in their authorized keys. So when you log in, you are using a different private key from your normal one (using the '-i' flag). It is still a private key, and should be protected appropriately, eg by removing read permissions from group/other (and not sending it by email!).

1 members found this post helpful.

neonsignal,
Thats great. Got a very clear idea. thanks a lot. I was googling for about 2 hours in vain. so happy to be a part of linuxquestions.

And now, you will have no way to generate a private-public key pair for yourself to use passwordless public-key logins to any other host. The usual way to accomplish what you want is to generate the key pair at the client end, and then distribute the public key to multiple hosts.

--- rod.