Logging into one server from two computers without password (re: LMS Lesson 12 & 15)

Questions
1

According to my note from @Will 's Lesson 12, he mentioned it’s best to have more than one key pair set for an important server, I assume he means setting two key pair set from two different computers. Is this correct?

If my assumption is correct, do I need to set up both computers to have a secured key pair login capability (not as root) before I change the /etc/ssh/sshd_config to deny password login (from lesson 15)?

Or do I setup an user account for the 2nd computer from the one used to change the sshd_config file then do the key pair generation and copy to server from the 2nd computer?

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2

Great question, I would also like to know how to create a second folder path for a set of 2nd keys from a different vps provider, to have more options for different internet browsing purposes on the same machine.

3

@George, I actually have several VPSes each running as a VPN server and providing a profile for each of my machines, so every machine has more than one VPN option to choose from. Is that what you like to have?

My question was about accessing one VPS from different machine after securing the VPS as shown by @Will in his lecture.

4

Since VPSs can be reinstalled with 1 click, I experimented with it.

  1. I secured a VPS with one computer first so I can login with secured key as a user.
  2. Added a 2nd user for accessing the VPS from the 2nd computer only.
  3. Then I went to the 2nd computer, try to login as root.
  4. Copy the content of the pub key on the 2nd computer and put it in the /.ssh/authorized_keys for the 2nd user account.

Now I can log into the same VPS from two computers.

Hope this experiment would be helpful to someone else!

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