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About This Document >>     Installing SSH Tectia Server (M) >>     Using SSH Tectia Server (M) >>     Troubleshooting SSH Tectia Server (M) >>     Configuration >>     Authentication >>         Server Authentication with Public Keys >>         Server Authentication with Certificates >>         User Authentication with Passwords         User Authentication with Public Keys >>         User Authentication with Certificates >>         Host-Based User Authentication >>             Client Configuration             Server Configuration             Optional Configuration Settings         User Authentication with Keyboard-Interactive >>         User Authentication with GSSAPI >>     Application Tunneling >>     Sample Files >>     Man Pages     Log Messages >>

Client Configuration

Host-based authentication can be enabled either by using traditional public keys or by using certificates.

Traditional Public Keys

To enable host-based authentication with traditional public keys on the client, do the following steps as ClientUser:

1. Generate a host key. By default, /etc/ssh2/hostkey and /etc/ssh2/hostkey.pub are generated during installation, so you can skip this step. Otherwise, give the following command:

   # ssh-keygen2 -P /etc/ssh2/hostkey
   

2. Add the following line in the /etc/ssh2/ssh2_config file:

   AllowedAuthentications hostbased

   Also other authentication methods can be listed. Place the least interactive method first. For example:

   AllowedAuthentications hostbased,publickey,password

3. Change the DefaultDomain keyword in the ssh2_config file to reflect your fully qualified domain:

   DefaultDomain example.com

   Setting this is mandatory if the HostbasedAuthForceClientHostnameDNSMatch keyword in the sshd2_config file on Server has been set to yes. But even if HostbasedAuthForceClientHostnameDNSMatch is not used, the DefaultDomain keyword is useful, for example, on AIX and Solaris, which report only the short hostname by default.

Certificates

It is possible to use a certificate instead of the traditional public-key pair to authenticate the client host.

To enable host-based authentication with certificates on the client, do the following steps as ClientUser:

1. Add the following line in the /etc/ssh2/ssh2_config file:

   AllowedAuthentications hostbased

2. Enroll a certificate for client. See User Authentication with Certificates for more information. The certificate must contain a dns extension which contains the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of client. Note that the private key associated with the certificate needs to be stored with an empty passphrase.
3. Define the private key and certificate in sshd2_config on client:

   HostKeyFile <private key> HostCertificateFile <server-certificate>

4. Change the DefaultDomain keyword in the ssh2_config file to reflect your fully qualified domain:

   DefaultDomain example.com