SSH and RSA

[Duane Powers <duane@uberLAN.net>]

Hi all,

Recently I was made administrator over a dozen Solaris boxen <heh>
The prior admin was offsite and used ssh with rsa keys to access the boxes.
He allowed root login, and used the RSA key functionality to keep the root
password safe.
I am not as mature as he was regarding ssh <newbie> and have only used
ssh as a plug in replacement to telnet, <I tend to not set a different 
p/w during
ssh-keygen> and simply access the boxes as follows: ssh -l <me> <hostname>
then I login using the normal p/w that is local to the box. I have found 
that he did
not need to transmit the local password over the tunnel, but rather used 
RSA to
verify his identity, but I can't find documentation on how to do it. 
<man ssh, man ssh-agent, man ssh-add, Practical UNIX & Internet 
Security> does anyone have any information on how I can implement the 
same safeguards? Or where I can at least find some documentation on 
practical ssh implementation.

As always, You guys are great, thanks in advance for the help,


~duane

--

  The plan was simple.  Unfortunately, so was Bullwinkle.