[TriLUG] private key permission/ownership on removable USB device

Mack.Joseph at epamail.epa.gov Mack.Joseph at epamail.epa.gov
Fri Feb 25 12:43:23 EST 2005


I need my ssh private keys on several machines at different locations
over which I don't have a lot of control. The keys are backed up
to tape and I don't have control of the tapes either. Instead of leaving
my private key on a whole lot of different disks, I thought of having
my private key on a mountable usb device (with ext3 filesystem),
but my uid/gids are different at different locations and the 600 private
key is only  readable at one location.

I was hoping that something like

mount -t ext3  -o uid=my_name,gid=my_group /dev/zip /mnt

(with /dev/zip owned by root)
would work, but  these options give errors (bad option).
`man mount` doesn't show these options for ext2/3 filesystems.

I then tried mounting the /proc/bus/usb filesystem with devuid=my_name.
The usb devices are all owned by me, but then the filesystems on
the usb device still have their original ownerships

How do I use a removable private key on different machines?

Thanks Joe

---
Joseph Mack PhD, High Performance Computing & Scientific Visualisation
LMIT, Supporting the EPA Research Triangle Park, NC 919-541-0007
Federal Contact - John B. Smith 919-541-1087 - smith.john at epa.gov




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