Using SSH keys with different login name - is it possible?
 

I have COMPUTER A which has a username, let say, John. I have a COMPUTER B which has a username, JohnDoe. I created the public/private keys on COMPUTER A. I send out my public key to COMPUTER B and would like to log in to it with the keys, however, since the login name is different, it does not recognize the keys.

Meanwhile, I have a COMPUTER C with username John that also has the public key of COMPUTER A, and that has no problem since the username is the same.

I have tried using the -i option to specify the location of the profile but it does not work and asks me the passphrase for the key, even though there is no passphrase for it:

Maybe the permissions on the remote computer B for .ssh and .ssh/authorized_keys

Use the following commands on Computer B home directory of johndoe
chmod 700 ~/.ssh
chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Now try loging as usually.

This info is from here. http://www.suso.org/docs/shell/ssh.sdf
A very good tutorial for ssh.

Brian

I already had it set with those permissions. Any other ideas?

I guess worse comes to worst, I just useradd a john on COMPUTER B, or useradd a johndoe to COMPUTER A

Much simpler than that! Man ssh would have told you that -l is the login name. So from computer A, The key will work fine, as it know knows where to look.

Peace,
JimBass

DUHHHH! Sorry guys, it turns out it was user error.

I didn't even create the public/private keys! It's a long story, but for security reasons, I am ssh'ing into 2 computers before I reach my destination of the 3rd computer I am trying to hit, which is then trying to connect to the 4th computer. Because of all those 'hops', I got confused as to which computer I was actually working from. :( :( :(

My home <---> Site A <---> Computer A <---> Computer B

I need to learn about SSH tunnels, but I'm always confused about it.

For example, lets say I do So how I interpret this is connect to computer A via SSH on port 22, then whatever hits port 5900 on ComputerA will forward to port 5901 on computer 192.168.1.2????

No I don't think that is correct. This always confuses me.
ssh -L <port to forward local machine>:<local machine you are starting the ssh from>:<port on the remote machine will see the port that was forwared> username@remote machine

Brian