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Just wanted a quick summary of the differences between them and why there are two? Cheers

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Gotta love those sequential-numbered files where the numbers bear no relation to their function, version or description. – Mark Henderson♦ May 16 '11 at 0:04
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3 Answers

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In OpenSSH prior to version 3, the sshd man page used to say:

The $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys file lists the RSA keys that are permitted for RSA authentication in SSH protocols 1.3 and 1.5 Similarly, the $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys2 file lists the DSA and RSA keys that are permitted for public key authentication (PubkeyAuthentication) in SSH protocol 2.0.

The release announcement for version 3 states that authorized_keys2 is deprecated and all keys should be put in the authorized_keys file.

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up vote 4 down vote

version differentiation.

don't bother anymore, as now '2' can be ignored.

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up vote 2 down vote

The use of authorized_keys2 for protocol 2 has been deprecated since 2001.

[via]

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If only someone would tell redhat that... authorized_keys fails, authorized_keys2 works fine. – El Yobo Sep 20 '11 at 2:33
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