Re: [gentoo-user] user config provisioning

["Stefan G. Weichinger" <lists@xunil.at>]

On 21.05.2015 00:02, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On 20/05/2015 23:06, Stefan G. Weichinger wrote:
>>
>> I am currently trying to slim down and minimize my own few machines.
>>
>> Way too much customer servers out there so I'd like to keep it simple in
>> here at least.
>>
>> This lead me to configuring and provisioning my machines via ansible.
>>
>> The goals:
>>
>> * make sure that my user exists
>> * roll out configs/dotfiles/git-repos/home-dir
>> * maybe roll out some system-configs as well (systemd-units, timers) /
>> ... separate ansible-role, OT here
>>
>> etc
>>
>> I have set up and maintained quite a list of bash-aliases to access my
>> customer-servers in daily work.
>>
>> Something like:
>>
>> alias abcd-server='ssh -p 51023 174.183.26.11'  # demo only
>>
>> This is based on ssh-pubkey-authentication, sure.
>>
>> My questions:
>>
>> * if I have a user X on each machine, should each userX@machine have its
>> own ssh-pubkey? Or is it OK to roll out the same ~/.ssh to all machines?
>>
>> * same q for ~/.gnupg ...
>>
>> I can deploy the pubkeys to the servers via ansible, sure.
>> But I would like to keep it simple. stupid.
>>
>> ;)
>>
> 
> 
> My opinion on this question is that it's irrelevant really. Whether you
> have one or X key pairs really doesn't matter, as you effectively only
> have one from a security POV.
> 
> What do I mean by that? Well, all your private keys are likely in one
> place, ~/.ssh on your own workstation, as it doesn't scale well to do it
> any other way. You probably store the passphrase for all keys in the
> same wallet, all protected by the same password. Let's be honest, we
> *all* do it like this :-)
> 
> So effectively we do not have X keys, we have 1 key as they are all
> protected by the same thing.
> 
> From a convenience POV, managing multiple keys is a huge PITA and
> there's no fast, accurate simple way to tell them apart. You have to
> store them in different places, or examine the trailing comment in each.
> 
> My usual recommendation is to use the same key for everything, except
> those servers where you have a very good reason not to. Examples might
> be a customer contract where you agreed to deploy a unique key used
> nowhere else, or an exceptional machine with exceptional security needs.
> Or even an ancient machine that you can't update that can only use ssh-1
> keys :-) Limit the number of things you have to keep in your head, that
> let's you focus on improving a smaller number of security aspects and is
> also more convenient.
> 
> Additionally, the simpler your policy rules, the easier it is to write
> an ansible play to implement them.

Thanks a lot for your statement, this is similar to what I think about
it. I just want to avoid to run into a stupid mistake here.

So I will take the ssh-keys of my main desktop, for my personal user sgw
and for root and deploy them on my machines (2 thinkpads, one desktop).
I can add that to my provisioning-role I currently work on.

I already have an ansible playbook that rolls out ssh-pubkeys to all the
customer servers I have to maintain. So far I pushed 7 separate keys out
there ...