Resetting your password
To reset your email password, you must contact one of the two admins, hblanks or mikeh, either by phone or an encrypted channel (Signal, Keybase, WhatsApp).
Encrypted channels:
When you reach out, make sure to provide your name and username. The admin will write back with a randomly generated password to use.
We do not give out passwords over e-mail.
SSH/SFTP access (public keys)
Shell and file access (SSH/SFTP) is by public key authentication only. So, to set this up, you’ll need to provide us with a copy of your SSH public key (typically, this is the file id_rsa.pub in the .ssh folder of your home directory. On Windows, it’s more complicated.).
When providing this key to us, you must also use an encrypted (really, an authenticated) channel such as Signal or Keybase. Signal is probably the easiest one.
To send your public key by Signal:
- Make sure you have Signal set up on your phone.
- Install and set up Signal Desktop on your computer.
- Send your SSH public key (e.g. ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub) as an attachment to the admin setting up your password.
Last, please note that public keys for SSH are now tracked in version control. This means that when you need to add or remove keys, you should send your updates to an admin using Signal or Keybase as above. (For testing or quick work, you can temporarily add keys to your .ssh/authorized_keys yourself, just note that any updates made there will be cleared out by the configuration manager, as tracked in version control, whenever it is next run.)