In addition to conventional keys and certificates stored as files on disk, several external key providers are available for accessing keys and certificates stored in hardware tokens or external software modules.
The example below initializes the
software
external key provider, which is used to access
keys and certificates on disk, and instructs it to read all keys in
/etc/ssh2/hostkeys
.
<params> <hostkey> <externalkey type="software" init-info="directory(/etc/ssh2/hostkeys)"/> </hostkey> ... </params>
Each hostkey
element can be used for setting up one
external key provider. Each provider may provide any number of keys to
the server. It should be noted that due to the limitations of the SSH2
protocol, having more than one key of each type (RSA, DSA, X.509
certificate with RSA key and X.509 certificate with DSA key) is
discouraged.
For more information on the different external keys and their initialization strings, see externalkey in ssh-server-config(5).