moving from client password to key authentication

[Ron Haines]

We have all of our Retrospect clients authenticated with passwords. Managing and securing the passwords is becoming a big task, so I am contemplating going to private/public key authentication. If I generate a key pair and start using it to add new clients, will this interfere with the existing clients using passwords? If I update a (passworded) client with a newer version, with the public_key in place for the client install, will the server switch to authentication with the key?

Thanks

[twickland]

We have all of our Retrospect clients authenticated with passwords. Managing and securing the passwords is becoming a big task, so I am contemplating going to private/public key authentication. If I generate a key pair and start using it to add new clients, will this interfere with the existing clients using passwords?

No, there will be no interference between the clients with different authentication methods.

 

 

 If I update a (passworded) client with a newer version, with the public_key in place for the client install, will the server switch to authentication with the key?

 

You can't just update the client. You would need to uninstall the old client software on the client machine and then install the new client version. For Mac clients, after you run the uninstall script, be sure that the file retroclient.state no longer exists at /Library/Preferences; if it does, trash it before installing the new client software.

[Ron Haines]

Thanks! I expect that info might be useful to a few people.