ssh keygen; asking for password

[mjc]

Hi Mazer

When I manually login using ssh -o "PubKeyAuthentication yes" userB@serverB, it will ask for password. I will look into the making your suggested change in the sshd_config file and see what happens.

Cheers

[mazer]

Hi Mazer

When I manually login using ssh -o "PubKeyAuthentication yes" userB@serverB, it will ask for password. I will look into the making your suggested change in the sshd_config file and see what happens.

Cheers

But I guess the server (serverB) still thinks that you have

PasswordAuthentication yes.

Just set this to "no" and restart the server.
Mazer

[mjc]

Hi Mazer
I wanted to circle back on this. Changing the option had no effect however after researching a bit more I was able to have it working.

The problem was due to permissions; the .ssh directory and key files on the serverB were set to mode 700 and 600 respectively. We also included an authorized_keys2 file. Once that was added, it worked. I'm not sure why we needed that second file, we're using Openssh 3.9p1 on both servers.

Thanks again

[mazer]

Hi Mazer
I wanted to circle back on this. Changing the option had no effect however after researching a bit more I was able to have it working.

The problem was due to permissions; the .ssh directory and key files on the serverB were set to mode 700 and 600 respectively. We also included an authorized_keys2 file. Once that was added, it worked. I'm not sure why we needed that second file, we're using Openssh 3.9p1 on both servers.

Thanks again

Thanks for your reply. I have never had a permission problem. I should check my settings.

I think you need the "authorized_keys2" file for ssh2. Since I am also using this version of ssh and still store my keys in the authorized_keys file (without a 2) I thought that this should also work for you. Strange. You can however specify
in the sshd_config file on your serverB

AuthorizedKeysFile .ssh/authorized_keys

and then it should work with the old file.

Cool that it is working now.
Mazer

[hunter3740]

Sorry to revisit this after two-and-a-half years, but I had the same problem (and this was the second link in a web search, so others deserve to know).

File permissions can be tricky, mine stopped working when I set the home directory to allow read to group ("sudo chmod 775 /home/username", as opposed to the default 755).

Changing the home directory permissions back fixed my issue (i.e. now not prompting for password again).

Not sure why ssh cares about allowing group (or anyone) to write to a home folder (or probably the .ssh inside it!), but it does. Looked in /etc/ssh/sshd_config, but not sure if there is a setting to ease up on this restriction and what implication that has (e.g. "strictmodes no"?). Also note, playing around with permissions of .ssh folder and authorized_keys2 files didn't affect the situation (i.e. I didn't *need* to have 700 and 600, respectively).