THE INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE APPLIES TO:

• EFT v6 and later

DISCUSSION

EFT currently allows any administrator to create accounts in EFT using passwords, but the use of Public Key Authentication requires the administrator to manually assign the keys to the accounts. As a standard operating procedure, many customers will want to use a specific Key file versus using a password. This is a manual process that must be done via the EFT administration interface; however, this can be automated with a little bit of effort. The administrator can automate the ability to upload the files into a ./.ssh directory and then trigger a VB script to import and install the PUB file to the user account. For example, all users are required to have an incoming and outgoing directory. 

The process below allows a user to upload a key file to EFT, and then assign it to their accounts like a normal LINUX system would.

1. Allow the user to create a /.ssh directory.
2. Allow the user to upload his test.pub key into that directory.
3. Create a Custom Command using script attached to this article.
4. Create an Event Rule that watches for the key file, and add the Custom Command to the Rule.

Now when the users upload a test.pub into the ./.ssh/ directory, the script will now do the Following:

1. Import the key into the SSH key manager
2. Assign key to user ID

The next time the user connects to the EFT system, password will no longer work and the KEY file will authenticate them.

Note: if the customer uploads the wrong file, they will be required to contact the EFT Administrator to remove it and to allow them to use the password again.

These steps prove that the account works:

1. They were able to login
2. They were able to upload a file

If the account does not work after the upload, then the easiest way to troubleshoot a failure for authentication is to remove the KEY the customer uploaded. The key itself could be wrong.