I am trying to use RSA public/private keys generated by PuTTY to log in to two GNU/Linux computers from Windows computers, and it works for one but not for the Ubuntu computer. The keys were generated on a Windows 7 desktop PC. From it I can log in to a Beaglebone Black running the Angstrom distro. I copied the keys to a Windows 7 laptop, and I was successful logging in to BBB from it as well, but not to the Ubuntu computer. I get the following message on the PuTTY terminal:
Using username "user".
Server refused our key
Using keyboard-interactive authentication.
Password:
I can complete the log in by entering the password, but I really want the keys to work so I can eliminate password log-ins over internet. The username is different between the two servers, but I think that is no problem, right?
I am using Ubuntu 14.04 LTS which has openssh-server installed. I copied the public key from PuTTYgen and pasted it into ~/.ssh/known_hosts. The key is on one line only, starting like this: ssh-rsa AAAAB...
The ~/.ssh directory has permissions set to 700, ~/.ssh/known_hosts is set to 600.
I had high hopes when I found this post on this board, but none of those solutions have fixed the problem.
At one point I accidentally deleted the host keys in /etc/ssh/, but I uninstalled openssh-server and then reinstalled it which brought back those keys. Well, at least it seems like I got them all back.
I opened one PuTTY terminal and issued tail -f /var/log/auth.log
, and then tried to log in on a second terminal. Nothing enlightening showed up. The first message acknowledged that the password log in was succesful, nothing about the keys though.
I have been tinkering with the configuration file /etc/ssh/sshd_config trying to hit the right combination of settings, each time restarting the daemon with service ssh restart
. Below is that file as it stands now. I think I might be missing something in there, but I am running out of ideas.
# Package generated configuration file
# See the sshd_config(5) manpage for details
# What ports, IPs and protocols we listen for
Port 22
# Use these options to restrict which interfaces/protocols sshd will bind to
#ListenAddress ::
#ListenAddress 0.0.0.0
Protocol 2
# HostKeys for protocol version 2
HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key
HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key
HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ecdsa_key
HostKey /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key
#Privilege Separation is turned on for security
UsePrivilegeSeparation yes
# Lifetime and size of ephemeral version 1 server key
KeyRegenerationInterval 3600
ServerKeyBits 1024
# Logging
SyslogFacility AUTH
LogLevel INFO
# Authentication:
LoginGraceTime 120
PermitRootLogin without-password
StrictModes no
RSAAuthentication yes
PubkeyAuthentication yes
AuthorizedKeysFile %h/.ssh/authorized_keys
# Don't read the user's ~/.rhosts and ~/.shosts files
IgnoreRhosts yes
# For this to work you will also need host keys in /etc/ssh_known_hosts
RhostsRSAAuthentication no
# similar for protocol version 2
HostbasedAuthentication no
# Uncomment if you don't trust ~/.ssh/known_hosts for RhostsRSAAuthentication
#IgnoreUserKnownHosts yes
# To enable empty passwords, change to yes (NOT RECOMMENDED)
PermitEmptyPasswords no
# Change to yes to enable challenge-response passwords (beware issues with
# some PAM modules and threads)
ChallengeResponseAuthentication yes
# Change to no to disable tunnelled clear text passwords
#PasswordAuthentication yes
# Kerberos options
#KerberosAuthentication no
#KerberosGetAFSToken no
#KerberosOrLocalPasswd yes
#KerberosTicketCleanup yes
# GSSAPI options
#GSSAPIAuthentication no
#GSSAPICleanupCredentials yes
X11Forwarding yes
X11DisplayOffset 10
PrintMotd no
PrintLastLog yes
TCPKeepAlive yes
#UseLogin no
#MaxStartups 10:30:60
#Banner /etc/issue.net
# Allow client to pass locale environment variables
AcceptEnv LANG LC_*
Subsystem sftp /usr/lib/openssh/sftp-server
# Set this to 'yes' to enable PAM authentication, account processing,
# and session processing. If this is enabled, PAM authentication will
# be allowed through the ChallengeResponseAuthentication and
# PasswordAuthentication. Depending on your PAM configuration,
# PAM authentication via ChallengeResponseAuthentication may bypass
# the setting of "PermitRootLogin without-password".
# If you just want the PAM account and session checks to run without
# PAM authentication, then enable this but set PasswordAuthentication
# and ChallengeResponseAuthentication to 'no'.
UsePAM yes
authorized_keys
file not theknown_hosts
file - is that just a typo in your question?