Linux Server Set Up A Script To Generate Random Keys

How do I generate ssh RSA keys under Linux operating systems?
You need to use the ssh-keygen command as follows to generate RSA keys (open terminal and type the following command):
ssh-keygen -t rsa
OR
ssh-keygen
Sample outputs:

Set up a local Linux installation and update server with Kickstart. Setting up Linux on multiple machines can take a lot of time and effort, but it doesn't have to. Also create a script to. Aug 19, 2019 Using SSH keys for authentication is highly recommended, as a safer alternative to passwords. This tutorial will guide you through the steps on how to generate and set up SSH keys on CentOS 7. We also cover connecting to a remote server using the keys and disabling password authentication.

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The -t type option specifies the type of key to create. The possible values “rsa” or “dsa” for protocol version 2. The $HOME/.ssh stores the following two files:

  • $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa – Your private RSA key
  • $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa.pub – Your public RSA key

Please do not share keys file with anyone else. You can upload keys to remote server as follows:
ssh-copy-id userName@server2.nixcraft.net.in
Finally, you can login to remote server as follows:
ssh userName@server2.nixcraft.net.in
scp file.txt userName@server2.nixcraft.net.in:~/data2/

See also:

  • Howto Linux / UNIX setup SSH with DSA public key authentication (password less login)
  • sshpass: Login To SSH Server / Provide SSH Password Using A Shell Script
  • keychain: Set Up Secure Passwordless SSH Access For Backup Scripts

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Entropy is nothing but the measure of “randomness” in a sequence of bits. The PRNG ( pseudorandom number generator ) is a special device (e.g. /dev/random on Linux) to create randomness from server hardware activities. It uses interrupts generated from the keyboard, hard disk, mouse, network and other sources. The random number generator gathers environmental noise from device drivers and other sources into an entropy pool. The randomness usually used for security purposes like creating TLS/SSL keys and the quality source of random bits is critical. For example, OpenSSL APIs can use quality randomness to make your program cryptographically secure. However, a poor source of randomness could result in loss of security. In this post, I will cover haveged and rng-utils/rng-tools to generate random numbers and feed Linux random device for your virtual or dedicated Linux server.

Running out of entropy on server or VMs is common

To see available entropy on Linux, enter:
$ cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail
Sample outputs:

It is rather low (anything below =< 1000) is going to take a long time to generate randomness using /dev/random as apps will block until you have enough entropy. In other words, you will see slow speed while generating keys or while using OpenSSL APIs. I recently asked on Twitter about it:

Does anyone know how to speed up?

openssl dhparam -out dhparams.pem 4096

— nixCraft # (@nixcraft) September 2, 2016

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I was suggested to look into the haveged project. The haveged software provides an easy-to-use, unpredictable random number generator based on an adaptation of the HAVEGE algorithm. Another suggested option was to use rng-tools/rng-utils to speed up entropy.

Finding out your current availability of entropy and quality of randomness

You need to use the rngtest command as follows. Install it from rng-tools without starting rng in background:
$ sudo RUNLEVEL=1 apt-get install rng-tools
$ cat /dev/random rngtest -c 1000

It is going to take forever to run last command due to low quality randomness. Let us see how to install haveged or rng-tools.

Option #1: Install haveged

Linux entropy source using the HAVEGE algorithm and can installed as follows:

Linux Server Set Up A Script To Generate Random Keys

Debian/Ubuntu Linux

Type the following apt-get command:
$ sudo apt-get install haveged
Sample outputs:

RHEL/CentOS Linux

First, turn on EPEL repo and type:
$ sudo yum install epel-release
$ sudo yum install haveged

Sample outputs:

That is all. Test it:
$ cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail
$ cat /dev/random rngtest -c 1000
$ haveged -n 2g -f - dd of=/dev/null

Option #2: Install rng-utils/rng-tools

Office key generator 2016 torrent. The rngd is hardware RNG entropy gatherer daemon. Type the following yum command on a CentOS/RHEL based system:
$ sudo yum install -y rng-utils
Sample outputs:

Debian / Ubuntu Linux users type the following apt-get command:
$ sudo apt-get install rng-tools
Sample outputs:

That is all. Test it:
$ cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail
$ cat /dev/random rngtest -c 1000

Examples

Now you should see speed up while using the following commands. To use perfect forward secrecy cipher suites, you must set up Diffie-Hellman parameters on the server side. To generate a strong DH group or GPG keys using CLI, run:
$ openssl dhparam -out dhparams.pem 2048
OR
$ openssl dhparam -out dhparams.pem 4096
OR
$ openssl dhparam -out dhparams.pem -dsaparam 4096
Type the following command to generates a key pair that consists of a public and a private key, execute:
$ gpg2 --gen-key
To generate a /root/keyfile for disk encryption with LUKS, enter:
$ sudo haveged -n 2048 -f /root/keyfile
To generate random ASCII passwords of the length 16 characters, run:
$ (haveged -n 1000 -f - 2>/dev/null tr -cd '[:graph:]' fold -w 16 && echo ) head -1
To test the randomness of the generated data with dieharder test suite (use ‘apt-get install dieharder‘ to use dieharder on Debian/Ubuntu Linux):
$ haveged -n 0 dieharder -g 200 -a
Sample outputs:

A note about ChaosKey

Linux Server Set Up A Script To Generate Random Keys Pdf

There is a hardware based True Random Number Generator that attaches via USB:

References:

Linux Server Set Up A Script To Generate Random Keys On Computer

  • Man pages – openssl(1),gpg(1),haveged(8),rngtest(1),dieharder(1)

Linux Server Set Up A Script To Generate Random Keys 2017

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