SSH: Best practice for Single-User/SSH config?

[silentflight15]

Hello. I'd appreciate some help after reading through many doc pages and forum posts on user configuration and ssh authentication

Some Background:

• My Freenas system is intended for a single user (myself) and internal to my home network only (no port-forwarding, external stuff)
• I'm comfortable with SSH setup in general.
• I currently have two users: root and kevin (me)

I'm between -
A) Create a dataset like "/mnt/tank/home/kevin" (or "/home/kevin" or another, better suggestion?) and add my .ssh/authorized_keys there
B) Just use root always and use root's .ssh/authorized_keys (Doesn't seem correct, but maybe I'm over-thinking it)


Is the second named user ("kevin") suggested in general and if so, where should that user's home dir be? Thanks.

 

[DrKK]

What are you trying to accomplish with sshd?

If you're just going to be logging in locally, then definitely, you're overthinking this.

 

[silentflight15]

What are you trying to accomplish with sshd?

If you're just going to be logging in locally, then definitely, you're overthinking this.

The server will be headless in another part of the house from where I work. Basically just the ability to use keys instead of passwords and to lock it down security-wise where I can, I suppose.

Thanks for the response. I appreciate any suggestions.

 

[m0nkey_]

Any how-to on SSH keys will pretty much work. If you're in Linux, create your key with ssh-keygen, then do the copy automatically using ssh-copy-id.

For the root user however, copy/paste the contents of your public key and update the "SSH Public Key" from the GUI for root.

Details on configuring SSH (there isn't much to be honest) can be found in the doc: http://doc.freenas.org/9.3/freenas_services.html#ssh

 

[silentflight15]

I didn't have any issues with actually setting up key-based ssh, but I appreciate the sanity check. I created a dataset for my user (me) and all seems to be working well. How to best setup user/group stuff threw me for a bit.