Configure ssh for MPI

To be able to run a parallel computation on a network of computers via MPI, one has to be able to log in to any of the machines without having to enter a password. This can be achieved easily using secure shell key authentication. This article describes the methodology to setup quickly ssh key authentication for MPI applications.

Principle of key authentication

The principle of key authentication is the following. A key-pair is generated which consists of private key and a public key. To generate the key-pair, a pass-phrase is used which associates the public key to the private key. A copy of the private key is stored on machine1 and the public key on machine2. When logging into machine2 from machine1, the secure shell program asks for the pass-phrase that matches the public key to the private key. The user is then authentified and fully logged into machine2.

This two stage process is a lot more secure than simply using a password as you also need to "own" the private key. This is a bit like credit card authentication; the system would be a lot less secure if you could just enter your PIN, without actually showing the card in the shop.

The private key is private (!). It needs to be known to you and only you. So be careful! You don't really care who can see the public key as only the private key fits with the public key. On wikipedia, the the public key is compared to a padlock. You don't care if people see the padlock as long as only you has the key to open it.

In the rest of this article, we assume that the user want to run parallel jobs on a network of machines called master, slave1, slave2 etc... master is the logging node, i.e. master is likely to be open to the Internet or to other machines.

Key generation on master

To generate a pair of public and private keys, use the following command:

master $ ssh-keygen -t rsa

If your network of computers for the parallel computations is on a safe private network and if no sensitive data is stored on the computing nodes, you should consider using a blank pass-phrase. Remember, this is different from a blank password, you still need to own the private key to be able to log in.

However, using a non blank and long pass-phrase is obviously more secure... but it is then slightly more complicated to setup MPI. In particular, the pass-phrase caching program ssh-agent will be required. This is described briefly in the "Advanced features" section at the end of this article.

After creating the key-pair, you will be left with two extra files in the .ssh/ folder:

master $ ls .ssh/
id_rsa  id_rsa.pub

id_rsa is your private key. It should be visible and writable to you only. id_rsa.pub is the public key. When you are at it, check the properties of the .ssh/ folder and id_rsa files. You should have something like:

master $ ls -la .ssh
drwx------  2 login login 4096 Aug 18 08:32 .
drwx------ 89 login login 4096 Aug 21 09:58 ..
-rw-------  1 login login  744 Mar 30 15:10 id_rsa
-rw-r--r--  1 login login  598 Mar 30 15:10 id_rsa.pub

Copy the key to the slaves

master$ scp .ssh/id_dsa.pub login@slave01:
master$ ssh slave01
slave1$ mkdir .ssh
slave1$ chmod 0600 .ssh
slave1$ cat id_dsa.pub > .ssh/authorized_keys
slave1$ rm -f id_dsa.pub

Now go back to the master node and try to log into slave01. You should be asked for the key this time:

master$ ssh login@slave01
Enter passphrase for key '.ssh/id_dsa':

Note that if you are using a blank key, you will not be asked for a password and will be logged in automatically.

Advanced features

ssh-agent

ssh-agent running ssh-add

master$ ssh login@slave1 slave01$

List of keys to use

from "master, slave01, slave02" sdvkms;dflmk