On Mon, 2020-03-23 at 06:50 +0800, Ed Greshko wrote:
On 2020-03-23 04:36, Samuel Sieb wrote:
On 3/22/20 1:19 PM, bruce wrote:
   on the remote VM, I want to create a user "bob". I also want to modify the remote to ssh into the VM as bob, using sshkeys

do I have to have a local user on my local linux as "bob".. pretty sure I don't! but I'm not sure where the local ssh key should be placed, to allow me to ssh into the remote using the key. Also, how doe this process work when accessing the remote from other local servers.. I'm assuming, I have to copy the key/files to any box I want to access the remote VM from.

The public key needs to be in bob's .ssh/authorized_keys file.  The private key needs to be in the .ssh folder of any user on any computer that wants to ssh to that account.  "ssh 
bob@1.2.3.4
"  If you don't have the private key saved as the default key, then you will need to either specify it on the command line or put it in the .ssh/config file.  If you put it in the config file, you can also set it up so you don't need to specify the "bob@" part either.  It will automatically use that user for that host.


FWIW, I don't copy the private key of a user to any other user's directory.  I find that violates the "private" principle.  Each user has their own public/private key-pair. 

Yes, it might seem like more of a hassle but you should generate a unique private key for each user/computer that you want to connect from and add all the public keys to bob's authorized_keys file.  That way if you ever need to revoke a key, like a computer is lost or stolen, you can simply remove the single public key for that user/computer