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I have a VPS on which I have multiple "users" (all me, for different things). I configured my local SSH public keys and used ssh-copy-id to copy to all of them. I am able to login without a password prompt only for some of them, however, and it's driving me crazy.

I used ssh -v [email protected] for one that works, and one that doesnt. The output text is all EXACTLY the same until toawrd the end:

The one that works looks like this: 

debug1: Next authentication method: publickey debug1: Offering RSA public key: /home/tom/.ssh/id_rsa debug1: Server accepts key: pkalg ssh-rsa blen 279 debug1: Authentication succeeded (publickey). Authenticated to xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx ([xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx]:22). debug1: channel 0: new [client-session] debug1: Entering interactive session. debug1: Sending environment. debug1: Sending env LANG = en_US.UTF-8

The one that doesn't looks like this: 

debug1: Next authentication method: publickey debug1: Offering RSA public key: /home/tom/.ssh/id_rsa debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,password,keyboard-interactive debug1: Trying private key: /home/tom/.ssh/id_dsa debug1: Trying private key: /home/tom/.ssh/id_ecdsa debug1: Next authentication method: keyboard-interactive debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,password,keyboard-interactive debug1: Next authentication method: password

I have double checked that the key and file permissions in authorized_keys is the same for each user and the .ssh folder, but for some reason the server isn't accepting the same exact key, which IS the same exact key stored on the server.

I have tried restarting the sshd daemon as well as the server.

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  • Have a look at sshd log on your VPS. Also make sure that the ~/.ssh has permission 700 and ~/.ssh/authorized_keys has permission 600. Commented Aug 1, 2011 at 2:22
  • The permissions are correct; I'll check the log! Commented Aug 1, 2011 at 2:38
  • All of my logs seem to be empty. The only one useful that's not just shows both me1 and me2 logging in from the same ip address with "pts/1", though I'm not sure what that is. Commented Aug 1, 2011 at 3:07
  • Which distro you are running on VPS? Commented Aug 1, 2011 at 3:19
  • CentOS 5. And I'm typing more because it's making me. Commented Aug 1, 2011 at 3:27

2 Answers 2

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I believe you should be inspecting your authorized_keys file on the server. On most systems where I have seen ssh-copy-id it is a very basic script with out a lot of error checking.

On several occasions I have seen it create duplicate entries, or create broken entries in the authorized_keys file. I have seen it upload a different key then what was expected.

For the best results when using ssh-copy-id you should use the -i option to explicitly identify the public portion of the key you want to be uploaded. If you don't the -i option it will pick the first file from a few locations, including from an SSH agent socket.

Take a few seconds to inspect the ssh-copy-id script on your system and you will almost certainly see what I am talking about.

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Not really a self standing answer, but not enough rep for a comment on Zoredache's answer.

I would add that on top of checking the permissions and ownership of the file, the directory and the parent directories, check the contents of the file. Depending on how you built the file, it could be that the key is stored as several lines instead of a single line.

I have had this issue copying and pasting keys from one file to another, and because the lines are the same length as the terminal's autowrap, it can be hard to detect.

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