ssh_known_hosts Cookbook

The Chef ssh_known_hosts cookbook exposes resource and default recipe for adding hosts and keys to the /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts file.

• The default recipe builds /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts based either on search indexes using rsa,dsa key types and ohai data or, when ['ssh_known_hosts']['use_data_bag_cache'] is true, on the contents of a data bag that is maintained by the cacher recipe running on a worker node.
• The cacher recipe builds and maintains a data bag based on search indexes using rsa,dsa key types and ohai data.
• The LWRP provides a way to add custom entries in your own recipes.

You can also optionally put other host keys in a data bag called "ssh_known_hosts". See below for details.

Requirements

Should work on any operating system that supports /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts.

The Chef Software partial_search cookbook is required for the default recipe, as well as a Chef Server that supports partial search:

• Chef Software Hosted Chef
• Chef Software Private Chef
• Open Source Chef Server 11

Usage

LWRP

Use the LWRP ssh_known_hosts_entry to append an entry for the specified host in /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts. For example:

ssh_known_hosts_entry 'github.com'

This will append an entry in /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts like this:

# github.com SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_5.5p1 Debian-6+squeeze1+github8
github.com ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEAq2A7hRGmdnm9tUDbO9IDSwBK6TbQa+PXYPCPy6rbTrTtw7PHkccKrpp0yVhp5HdEIcKr6pLlVDBfOLX9QUsyCOV0wzfjIJNlGEYsdlLJizHhbn2mUjvSAHQqZETYP81eFzLQNnPHt4EVVUh7VfDESU84KezmD5QlWpXLmvU31/yMf+Se8xhHTvKSCZIFImWwoG6mbUoWf9nzpIoaSjB+weqqUUmpaaasXVal72J+UX2B+2RPW3RcT0eOzQgqlJL3RKrTJvdsjE3JEAvGq3lGHSZXy28G3skua2SmVi/w4yCE6gbODqnTWlg7+wC604ydGXA8VJiS5ap43JXiUFFAaQ==

You can optionally specify your own key, if you don't want to use ssh-keyscan:

ssh_known_hosts_entry 'github.com' do
  key 'node.example.com ssh-rsa ...'
end

Cacher

Use the cacher recipe on a single "worker" node somewhere in your cluster to maintain a data bag (server_data/known_hosts by default) containing all of your nodes host keys. The advantage to this approach is that is much faster than running a search of all nodes, and substantially lightens the load on locally hosted Chef servers. The drawback is that the data is slightly delayed (because the cacher worker must converge first).

To use the cacher, simply include the ssh_known_hosts::cacher cookbook in a wrapper cookbook or run list on a designated worker node.

Attributes

The following attributes are set on a per-platform basis, see the attributes/default.rb.

• node['ssh_known_hosts']['file'] - Sets up the location of the ssh_known_hosts file for the system. Defaults to '/etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts'
• node['ssh_known_hosts']['key_type'] - Determines which key type ssh-keyscan will use to determine the host key, different systems will have different available key types, check your manpage for available key types for ssh-keyscan. Defaults to 'rsa,dsa'
• node['ssh_known_hosts']['use_data_bag_cache'] - Use the data bag maintained by the cacher server to build /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts instead of a direct search (requires that a node be set up to run the cacher recipe regularly).
• node['ssh_known_hosts']['cacher']['data_bag']/node['ssh_known_hosts']['cacher']['data_bag_item'] - Data bag where cacher recipe should store its keys.

LWRP Attributes

Attribute	Description	Example	Default
host	the host to add	github.com
key	(optional) provide your own key	ssh-rsa ...	ssh-keyscan -H #{host}
port	(optional) the server port that ssh-keyscan will use to gather the public key	2222	22

---

Default Recipe

Searches the Chef Server for all hosts that have SSH host keys using rsa,dsa key types and generates an /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts.

Adding custom host keys

There are two ways to add custom host keys. You can either use the provided LWRP (see above), or by creating a data bag called "ssh_known_hosts" and adding an item for each host:

{
  "id": "github",
  "fqdn": "github.com",
  "rsa": "github-rsa-host-key"
}

There are additional optional values you may use in the data bag:

Attribute	Description	Example	Default
id	a unique id for this data bag entry	github
fqdn	the fqdn of the host	github.com
rsa	the rsa key for this server	ssh-rsa AAAAB3...
ipaddress	the ipaddress of the node (if fqdn is missing)	1.1.1.1
hostname	local hostname of the server (if not a fqdn)	myserver.local
dsa	the dsa key for this server	ssh-dsa ABAAC3...

###ChefSpec matchers

A custom matcher is available for you to use in recipe tests.

describe 'my_cookbook::my_recipe' do
	let(:chef_run) { ChefSpec::Runner.new.converge(described_recipe) }
	it { expect(chef_run).to append_to_ssh_known_hosts 'github.com' }
end

License & Authors

Author: Cookbook Engineering Team (cookbooks@chef.io)

Copyright: 2008-2015, Chef Software, Inc.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.