Hey Guys,
Can anyone please point me in the right direction on how to set up remote administration between 2 nodes via the app. I had it working in V2.4 but I’m not sure what to do now?
Is it the admin key on the security page? Thanks!
Cheers,
Scott
Copy the public key from the node you want to admin from into the admin key field in your target node.
Awesome, Thanks for that!!
Do you still need to have an admin channel setup on all the nodes like in 2.4?
No, not if both (or all) nodes are on 2.5
Or further… how do you select the `remote’ node to manage it? in 2.4, under Settings → Configure", there was a dropdown of nodes to select which node to manage
Is this only available on the iOS app? I’m not seeing any options like this on Android…
Its here…
My app just updated itself?
Not sure if you can initiate it yourself…
Screenshot_20241008_145434_Meshtastic|233x500
Thanks, must be close. I’m not seeing an update option yet on the play store though.
Another question, how is the “public key” generated? Is it possible to manually update this on a new administrating node to match what was already plugged into the remote node? I assume not as that would pose a major security concern. But this limits to a single admin node with no ability to change admin rights short of having physical or BLE access to the remote node correct? I liked how the legacy setup allowed any node with the correct admin channel to access the remote node.
@SydneySOLO I’m not very familiar with the iOS app. Someone else might know.
@Amc-2 If you always want the latest app, you can use Obtainium add the Meshtastic-Android repo, enabling the Pre-releases option when adding it.
I’m not for sure, but my understanding is that there’s firmware support for up to 3 admin keys and that the clients will be adding support for it too at some point. I’ve heard it said that you can copy keys between nodes so you can admin from more than one, but yeah that’s not great for security. I’m just making do with 1 admin node for now, myself.
In “App Settings” do you need to turn on the Administration toggle for IOS?
@Droopy And THAT is the missing piece. Toggling that and everything burst into life. Thanks!
It appears the keys are randomly generated on factory reset. But you can manually update both the public and private keys.
I did some testing with an admin node and a remote node. Then on a third node I copied both keys from the admin node and this gave admin access to both nodes at the same time. Copying only the public key didn’t work, this seems good from a security standpoint. There might be some weirdness with dm’s trying to run both nodes at the same time with the same keys, haven’t tested much beyond confirming admin access. But it looks like this could work as an admin backup option.
It looks like there could be support for 3 admin keys added in the next Android app release.
In case this helps someone, this is how to setup remote admin using the iOS app. Node A is the primary node. Node B is the remote node.
In the node A menu “Settings → Security”, manually copy and share (i.e.: send) the Public Key from node A to node B. In the node B menu “Settings → Security” , manually paste that Public Key into the field labeled “Primary Admin Key”. Click “Save” at the bottom of the screen. Of course you can manually type in the Public Key if you’re a glutton for punishment.
On BOTH nodes A and B, turn on the “Administration” toggle found under “Settings → App Settings”.
On node A in the “Settings → Configure” menu (which is only seen after turning on “Administration“ in step 1), choose which node you want to change (administer) the settings… that’s either node A (the default) or node B (the remote node).
Still on node A, whichever node that you’ve selected in the “Settings → Configure” menu (previous step) will now be active in all the Settings menus of node A. If you choose node B to configure, you’ll see node B’s name listed on each screen of the Settings menus on node A.
When done using node A to make changes to remote node B, remember to change back the “Settings → Configure” to node A. Obviously it’s important to pay attention to the name of the node your administering on the Settings screens.
