Automate SSH Configuration for new Hadoop cluster

Guessing this has been done many times, but I could not find a clean answer, so I am appealing to your expertise for a better solution:

Objective: I am setting up a moderate sized RHEL Hadoop cluster and want to automate the configuration of SSH connectivity between all nodes. On the first node I have a list of all of the IPs in the file 'remote_ips', and I have the hduser password in the file 'hduser_pw' (chmod 600).

Step 1) Create "hduser_pw" password file on each host

for x in $(cat remote_ips); do sshpass -p$(cat hduser_pw) ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no hduser@$x "echo $(cat hduser_pw) > hduser_pw; chmod 600 hduser_pw"; done

Step 2) Generate RSA keys for each node in cluster:

for x in $(cat remote_ips); do sshpass -p$(cat hduser_pw) ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no hduser@$x "echo -e 'y'| ssh-keygen -t rsa -N \"\" "; done

Step 3) Copy the file 'remote_ips' to each node in the cluster:

for x in $(cat remote_ips); do sshpass -p$(cat hduser_pw) scp -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no remote_ips hduser@$x:~; done

Step 4) For each node, copy the RSA public key to "authorized_keys" in every other node:

for x in $(cat remote_ips); do sshpass -p$(cat hduser_pw) ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no hduser@$x 'for y in $(cat remote_ips); do cat /home/hduser/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | sshpass -p$(cat hduser_pw) ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no hduser@$y '\''cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys'\'' ; done '; done

Is there a better way to do this? Really appreciate your help.

EDIT: Here are my revisions:

I incorporated the feedback from @janos and @likewhoa --> I handled the UUOC with redirection, looped across each IP, removed any pwds from the shell history with variables, etc. Thanks so much!

hduser_pw=$(< hduser_pw)
remote_ips=$(< remote_ips)

for x in $remote_ips; do
    echo "Create hduser_pw password file on node: ${x}"
    sshpass -p$hduser_pw scp -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no hduser_pw hduser@$x:~

    echo "chmod 600 hduser_pw on node: ${x}"
    sshpass -p$hduser_pw ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no hduser@$x "chmod 600 hduser_pw"

    echo "Generate RSA keys for: ${x}"
    sshpass -p$hduser_pw ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no hduser@$x "echo y | ssh-keygen -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa -t rsa -N \"\""

    echo "SCP the file remote_ips to node: ${x}"
    sshpass -p$hduser_pw scp -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no remote_ips hduser@$x:~
done

for x in $remote_ips; do 
    for y in $remote_ips; do
        echo "ssh-copy-id from node ${x} to node ${y}:"
        sshpass -p$hduser_pw ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no hduser@$x "sshpass -p${hduser_pw} ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub hduser@${y} -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no";
    done
done

Solution

Instead of running $(cat hduser_pw) and $(cat remote_ips) multiple times, it would be better to run them only once and, save in variables and reuse. For example:

hduser_pw=$(cat hduser_pw)
remote_ips=$(cat remote_ips)

# Step 1) Create "hduser_pw" password file on each host
for x in $remote_ips; do
    sshpass -p$hduser_pw ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no hduser@$x "echo $hduser_pw > hduser_pw; chmod 600 hduser_pw"
done

Can you spot the security problem? The echo $hduser_pw will be saved in the shell history, and may also be visible in ps printings. It's better to avoid it. Instead of this:

ssh server "echo $hduser_pw > hduser_pw; chmod 600 hduser_pw"

You can do like this:

ssh server "cat > hduser_pw; chmod 600 hduser_pw" < hduser_pw

That's a bit hacky and may be confusing. A simpler option is to scp and then ssh (for the chmod):

scp hduser_pw server:
ssh server "chmod 600 hduser_pw"

Other simplifications:

Instead of echo -e 'y' | ... you can simplify to echo y | ...
Instead of the messy Step 4, take a look into ssh-copy-id if it's available (usually it is in Linux systems)