SSH Public Key Authentication

Note. Only some Virtualization Providers in vPlus like Proxmox VE allow you authentication using SSH key.

General

Instead of using password authentication - anywhere where you're able to provide SSH credentials (hypervisors, VMs applications, etc.) you also have the public key alternative.**. By default, vPlus uses the /opt/vprotect/.ssh/id_rsa path, however, you also can override it with your own path*. *(this needs to be owned by vprotect user and make sure it has the 0400 permission set. **You don't have to pass a passphrase, you can leave this parameter blank.

Note. vPlus does not support keys other than "RSA".

Example

1. Generate a key or use yours and store it as /opt/vprotect/.ssh/id_rsa (make sure that the vprotect user and group own the file)

• example key generation:

sudo -u vprotect ssh-keygen -t rsa -m PEM

2. use ssh-copy-id to upload your public key (as vprotect user) to the KVM host:

sudo -u vprotect ssh-copy-id -i /opt/vprotect/.ssh/id_rsa.pub root@HYPERVISOR

3. Check if you're able to log in to the hypervisor using the local vprotect user without being asked for the password:

sudo -u vprotect ssh -i /opt/vprotect/.ssh/id_rsa root@dkvm
#Last failed login: Mon Jan 29 17:53:01 CET 2018 from 10.50.1.107 on ssh:notty
#There was 1 failed login attempt since the last successful login.
#Last login: Mon Jan 29 17:52:39 2018 from 10.50.1.107

4. Now you should be able to index VMs regardless of the password set for the hypervisor (the key should be used instead)

5. Now, you can provide path to your new SSH key (default: /opt/vprotect/.ssh/id_rsa) when creating a new Virtualization Provider in vPlus dashboard