Why does cisco IOS require domain-name to be set before SSH keys can be generated?
- by Daniel Papasian
Is there a technical reason why IOS requires the device's domain-name to be set (via ip domain-name) before an SSH key can be generated? Is the domain-name used in any way in the generation of the key?
Is there any way to force the generation of a key before the domain name is set?
UPDATE: Myself (before I posted this question) and others in your answer seem to think it may be used as either a salt or a source of entropy for the key. Wouldn't the domain-name be very predictable? This doesn't seem like a suitable source of entropy.