[FreeNX-kNX] Understanding keys / Debugging SSH issues

[Torsten Schlabach]

Dear List,

I am still trying to find out why I cannot make FreeNX work.

As suggested, I have done

nxsetup --uninstall --purge

then

nxsetup --install --setup-nomachine-key

My understanding of the --setup-nomachine-key option would be that it will
set up the key that I can find in the NoMachine NX Client for Windows as the
"Default Key".

I would have expected to the find one pair of keys (private, public). But
there are four key files generated:

[root at intern /etc/nxserver]# ls -l
insgesamt 32
-rw-------    1 nx       root          668 22. Mär 15:09 client.id_dsa.key
-rwxr-xr-x    1 nx       root        13849 24. Sep 16:51 node.conf.sample
-rw-------    1 nx       root            0 22. Mär 15:21 passwords
-rw-------    1 nx       root            0 22. Mär 15:21 passwords.orig
-rw-------    1 nx       root          619 22. Mär 15:09
server.id_dsa.pub.key
-rw-------    1 nx       root          668 22. Mär 15:21 users.id_dsa
-rw-r--r--    1 nx       root          619 22. Mär 15:21 users.id_dsa.pub

I was guessing that client.id_dsa.key and server.id_dsa.pub.key would make a
pair. So I tried manually to use client.id_dsa.key to ssh as nx into the
server, but the key is rejected, though the server.id_dsa.pub.key is in the
authorized_keys file of the NX user
(/var/lib/nxserver/home/.ssh/authorized_keys) but it does not work, which is
basically the same problem I have when trying to connect using the NoMachine
NX client. (Authentication of user nx failed.)

I also noticed that I only have a node.conf.sample but no node.conf. Is a
node.conf optional?

I am somewhat lost because I read somewhere that FreeNX expects entries in
node.conf in a different format as the NoMachine NX Server. Therefore I am
not sure if it will help at all to cp node.conf.example to node.conf and
remove some comments. At least I had the impression it does not have any
impact. (See my earlier posting on not beeing able to get any logging.)

I would try the latest SVN version of FreeNX but I cannot get it off the
repository. (See my posting on this.)#

I am becoming desperate.

Regards,
Torsten