Re: sftp and key locations

Tim,

The design of SSH (sftp is just a different UI for ssh) is that you generate "identity" keys -- i.e., the key actually identifies the user.  So the way it is intended to work is that each user generates their own key, which identifies them everywhere (not just one vendor, but everyone they communicate with SSH).  It is their unique, secure, cryptographic identity.

However, it is certainly possible to use a single key for multiple users.  You can do that by pointing to a different location for the identity file using command-line options.  I don't have the ref manual in front of me, but it was something like -oIdentityFile=/xxx/yyy, and I think a different poster already suggested this.

What's important to understand about this is that on the remote system (the SFTP server in this case) everyone using this key will appear to be the same user.

If that's what you're going for, this technique should work fine.

-SK



On 8/21/2018 12:33 PM, tim wrote:

I have a vendor we send data using sftp. i created the process with my profile so all the key info exists in my folder /home/me/.ssh. i would like to be able run this process for any user on the iseries.

do i have to create a .ssh folder for each user and copy the keys into those folders, or can i have 1 main location for all the ssh stuff?