Adding a public key to ssh authorized keys does not log me in automatically

Question

I added the public SSH key to the authorized keys file   ssh localhost should log me in without asking for the password   I did that and tried typing ssh localhost  but it still asks me to type in the password  Is there another setting that I have to go through to make it work   I have followed the instructions for changing permissions   Below is the result if I do ssh -v localhost   debug1  Reading configuration data  home john  ssh config debug1  Reading configuration data  etc ssh ssh config debug1  Applying options for   debug1  Connecting to localhost  127 0 0 1  port 22  debug1  Connection established  debug1  identity file  home john  ssh identity type 1 debug1  identity file  home john  ssh id rsa type -1 debug1  identity file  home john  ssh id dsa type -1 debug1  Remote protocol version 2 0  remote software version OpenSSH 4 7p1 Debian-8ubuntu3 debug1  match  OpenSSH 4 7p1 Debian-8ubuntu3 pat OpenSSH  debug1  Enabling compatibility mode for protocol 2 0 debug1  Local version string SSH-2 0-OpenSSH 4 7p1 Debian-8ubuntu3 debug1  SSH2 MSG KEXINIT sent debug1  SSH2 MSG KEXINIT received debug1  kex  server- gt client aes128-cbc hmac-md5 none debug1  kex  client- gt server aes128-cbc hmac-md5 none debug1  SSH2 MSG KEX DH GEX REQUEST 1024 lt 1024 lt 8192  sent debug1  expecting SSH2 MSG KEX DH GEX GROUP debug1  SSH2 MSG KEX DH GEX INIT sent debug1  expecting SSH2 MSG KEX DH GEX REPLY debug1  Host  localhost  is known and matches the RSA host key  debug1  Found key in  home john  ssh known hosts 12 debug1  ssh rsa verify  signature correct debug1  SSH2 MSG NEWKEYS sent debug1  expecting SSH2 MSG NEWKEYS debug1  SSH2 MSG NEWKEYS received debug1  SSH2 MSG SERVICE REQUEST sent debug1  SSH2 MSG SERVICE ACCEPT received debug1  Authentications that can continue  publickey password debug1  Next authentication method  publickey debug1  Offering public key   home john  ssh identity debug1  Server accepts key  pkalg ssh-rsa blen 149 debug1  PEM read PrivateKey failed debug1  read PEM private key done  type  lt unknown gt    Then it asks for a passphase after the above log  Why isn t it logging me in without a password

User · Answer

Beware that SELinux can trigger this error as well  even if all permissions seem to be OK  Disabling it did the trick for me  insert usual disclaimers about disabling it

User · Answer

I have had the same issues since before  but today I had to set up one new server  What I could learn in this time    The basic process to allow authentication without a password is as follows   On the server  validate if your home folder has the  ssh folder  If it doesn t exist  you can create it manually with a mkdir command and then to assign the correct permissions with chmod  or otherwise you could use the same utility  ssh-keygen  to create private public keys  but on the server for your user  This process will create the required  ssh folder   On the local machine you also need to create the private public keys with the ssh-keygen utility   You need to move your public key to file  ssh authorized keys to the server  To achieve this  you can use the ssh-copy-id utility  or you can do it manually using the cat and scp commands   In the best of cases  this will allow connect to your server without a password    OK  now the issues that I found today  first there are several key generation algorithms  rsa  dsa  ecdsa and ed25519 and there are many releases of OpenSSH  you can have one version on your local machine and an old version on your server   Hint  Using ssh -v helps to see additional information when you are connecting to the server  OpenSSH 8 2p1 Ubuntu-4  OpenSSL 1 1 1f  31 Mar 2020 debug1  Remote protocol version 2 0  remote software version OpenSSH 5 3 The error in my case today was that I was trying to use a key with a  quot newer quot  generation algorithm that was not supported by the installed version of OpenSSH on the server  When I had checked the supported algorithms  another error that I found was that the server was rejecting my algorithm  debug1  Skipping ssh-dss key  home user  ssh id dsa - not in PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes After that  I had to change the algorithm of my key and then I could connect with the server successfully  OpenSSH releases notes  Link

User · Answer

I use it this way  cat    ssh id rsa pub  ssh user remote-system  umask 077  cat  gt  gt    ssh authorized keys

User · Answer

Make sure you ve copied the whole public key to authorized keys  the ssh rsa prefix is necessary for the key to work

User · Answer

I had this problem when I added the group of the login user to another user  Let s say there is an SSH-login user called userA and a non-SSH-login user userB  userA has the group userA as well  I modified userB to have the group userA as well  The lead to the the described behaviour  so that userA was not able to login without a prompt  After I removed the group userA from userB  the login without a prompt worked again

User · Answer

Issue these on the command line  chmod 700    ssh chmod 600    ssh authorized keys  After you do this  make sure your directory is like this  drwx------ 2 lab lab 4 0K Mar 13 08 33   drwx------ 8 lab lab 4 0K Mar 13 08 07    -rw------- 1 lab lab  436 Mar 13 08 33 authorized keys -rw------- 1 lab lab 1 7K Mar 13 07 35 id rsa -rw-r--r-- 1 lab lab  413 Mar 13 07 35 id rsa pub

User · Answer

The thing that did the trick for me finally was to make sure that the owner group were not root  but user  chown -R    ssh  user chgrp -R    ssh  user

User · Answer

Also be sure your home directory is not writeable by others  chmod g-w o-w  home USERNAME  This answer is stolen from here

User · Answer

In the following  user is your username  mkdir -p  home user  ssh ssh-keygen -t rsa touch  home user  ssh authorized keys touch  home user  ssh known hosts chown -R user user  home user  ssh chmod 700  home user  ssh chmod 600  home user  ssh id  chmod 644  home user  ssh id  pub chmod 644  home user  ssh authorized keys chmod 644  home user  ssh known hosts

User · Answer

You need to verify the properties of the files  To assign the required property  use    chmod 600    ssh sshKey   chmod 644    ssh sshKey pub

User · Answer

You need to verify the permissions of the authorized keys file and the folder   parent folders in which it is located   chmod 700    ssh chmod 600    ssh authorized keys   For more information see this page   You may also need to change verify the permissions of your home directory to remove write access for the group and others   chmod go-w

User · Answer

I issued sudo chmod 700    ssh and chmod 600    ssh authorized keys and chmod go-w  HOME  HOME  ssh from a previous answer and it fixed my problem on a CentOS 7 box that I had messed up the permissions on while trying to get Samba shares working

User · Answer

This solves my problem  ssh-agent bash  ssh-add

User · Answer

Another tip to remember  Since v7 0 OpenSSH disables DSS DSA SSH keys by default due to their inherit weakness  So if you have OpenSSH v7 0   make sure your key is not ssh-dss   If you are stuck with DSA keys  you can re-enable support locally by updating your sshd config and    ssh config files with lines like so  PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes  ssh-dss

User · Answer

Look in file  var log auth log on the server for sshd authentication errors  If all else fails  then run the sshd server in debug mode  sudo  usr sbin sshd -ddd -p 2200  Then connect from the client  ssh user host -p 2200  In my case  I found the error section at the end      debug1  userauth pubkey  test whether pkalg pkblob are acceptable for RSA SHA256 6bL waAtghY5BOaY9i pIX9wHJHvY4r mOh2YaL9RvQ  preauth     gt  debug2  userauth pubkey  disabled because of invalid user  preauth      debug2  userauth pubkey  authenticated 0 pkalg ssh-rsa  preauth      debug3  userauth finish  failure partial 0 next methods  quot publickey password quot   preauth      debug3  send packet  type 51  preauth      debug3  receive packet  type 50  preauth   With this information I realized that my sshd config file was restricting logins to members of the ssh group  The following command fixed this permission error  sudo usermod -a -G ssh NEW USER

User · Answer

Just look in file  var log auth log on the server  Setting additional verbosity with -vv on the client side won t help  because the server is unlikely to offer too much information to a possible attacker

User · Answer

In my case I needed to put my authorized keys file in  openssh    This location is specified in  etc ssh sshd config under the option AuthorizedKeysFile   h  ssh authorized keys

User · Answer

Listing a public key in  ssh authorized keys is necessary  but not sufficient for sshd  server  to accept it  If your private key is passphrase-protected  you ll need to give ssh  client  the passphrase every time  Or you can use ssh-agent  or a GNOME equivalent   Your updated trace is consistent with a passphrase-protected private key  See ssh-agent  or use ssh-keygen -p

User · Answer

It seems like a permission problem  Usually it happens if the permission of some file directory is not correctly set up  In most case they are    ssh and    ssh    In my case they are  home xxx  You can change the log level of sshd by modifying file  etc ssh sshd config search for LogLevel  and set it to DEBUG  and then check the output in file  var log auth log to see what happened exactly

User · Answer

Setting ssh authorized keys seem to be simple  but it hides some traps I m trying to figure  -- SERVER -- In  etc ssh sshd config  set passwordAuthentication yes to let the server temporarily accept password authentication -- CLIENT --  consider Cygwin as Linux emulation and install  amp  run OpenSSH  1  Generate private and public keys  client side    ssh-keygen  Here pressing just Enter  you get default two files   quot id rsa quot  and  quot id rsa pub quot   in    ssh   but if you give a name for the key  the generated files are saved in your current working directory  2  Transfer the your key pub file to the target machine  ssh-copy-id user name host name If you didn t create a default key  this is the first step to go wrong     you should use  ssh-copy-id -i path to key name pub user name host name 3  Logging ssh user name host name will work only for the default id rsa file  so here is the second trap  You need to do ssh -i path to key name user host  Use ssh -v     option to see what is happening   If the server still asks for a password then you gave something  To Enter passphrase  when you ve  created keys  so it s normal   If ssh is not listening on the default port 22  you must use ssh -p port nr  -- SERVER ----- 4  Modify file  etc ssh sshd config to have RSAAuthentication yes PubkeyAuthentication yes AuthorizedKeysFile   h  ssh authorized keys   uncomment if case  This tells ssh to accept file authorized keys and look in the user home directory for the key name sting written in the  ssh authorized keys file  5 Set permissions on the target machine chmod 755    ssh chmod 600    ssh authorized keys  Also turn off pass authentication  passwordAuthentication no to close the gate to all ssh root admin      your domain attempts  6  Ensure ownership and group ownership of all non-root home directories are appropriate  chown -R   usernamehere chgrp -R    ssh  user                                                  7  Consider the excellent http   www fail2ban org 8  Extra SSH tunnel to access a MySQL  bind   127 0 0 1  server

User · Answer

In my case it s because the user s group is not set in AllowGroups of configuration file  etc ssh sshd config  After adding it  everything works fine

User · Answer

I had this problem and none of the other answers solved it  although of course the other answers were correct  In my case  it turned out that the  root directory itself  not e g   root  ssh  had the wrong permissions  I needed  chown root root  root chmod 700  root  Of course  those permissions should be something like that  maybe chmod 770  regardless  However  it specifically prevented sshd from working  even though  root  ssh and  root  ssh authorized keys both had correct permissions and owners

User · Answer

I have the home directory in a non-standard location and in sshd logs I have the following line  even if all permissions were just fine  see the other answers    Could not open authorized keys   data home user1  ssh authorized keys   Permission denied  I have found a solution here  Trouble with ssh public key authentication to RHEL 6 5 In my particular case   Added a new line in  etc selinux targeted contexts files file contexts homedirs   This is the original line for regular home directories   home         ssh       unconfined u object r ssh home t s0  This is my new line   data home         ssh       unconfined u object r ssh home t s0  Followed by a restorecon -r  data  and a sshd restart

User · Answer

SELinux can also cause authorized keys not to work  Especially for root in CentOS 6 and 7  There isn t any need to disable it though  Once you ve verified your permissions are correct  you can fix this like so  chmod 700  root  ssh chmod 600  root  ssh authorized keys restorecon -R -v  root  ssh

User · Answer

The desperate may also make sure they don t have extra newlines in the authorized keys file due to copying file id rsa pub s text out of a confused terminal

User · Answer

Make sure that the target user has a password set  Run passwd username to set one  This was required for me even if password SSH login was disabled

User · Answer

My problem was a modified AuthorizedKeysFile  when the automation to populate  etc ssh authorized keys had not yet been run    sudo grep AuthorizedKeysFile  etc ssh sshd config  AuthorizedKeysFile  ssh authorized keys AuthorizedKeysFile   etc ssh authorized keys  u

User · Answer

Try  ssh-add  which worked for me

User · Answer

On that note  make sure your sshd configuration has this line  PermitRootLogin without-password  Set as the above  and then restart sshd   etc init d sshd restart   Log out and try log in in again  The default  I believe  is  PermitRootLogin no

User · Answer

Another issue you have to take care of  If your generated file names are not the default id rsa and id rsa pub  You have to create the  ssh config file and define manually which id file you are going to use with the connection  An example is here  Host remote host name     HostName 172 xx xx xx     User my user     IdentityFile  home my user  ssh my user custom

[ssh] Adding a public key to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys does not log me in automatically

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