On Fri, Mar 25, 2016 at 12:12 PM, Tom Browder <tom.brow...@gmail.com> wrote: > I have installed Deb on my laptop and reused my old Deb 7 .ssh directory. > > I can now ssh into the existing remote servers but cannot ssh into my > laptop from them (as a normal user)--I always get asked for a > password. So the remote servers recognize my old Deb 7 keys, but > apparently my laptop doesn't recognize the other servers' keys. ...
I found this wonderful resource: http://www.unixlore.net/articles/troubleshooting-ssh-connections.html which helped me solve the problem. First, in file '/etc/ssh/sshd_config', I changed the line StrictModes yes to this StrictModes no and restarted the ssh server. As root: # invoke-rc.d ssh restart Then I attempted the ssh login and it worked! Base on the comments from jvp, I looked closer at my home directory on the laptop and, sure enough, the permissions were too loose (first I have ever heard of that, but then again I haven't looked at 'man ssh' in many years). Note that I have for all the years after ssh came along been setting the .ssh permissions correctly, but I've never run into a problem with the home directory. In fact, when I was working at our office on site (up until the end of 2008), we commonly allowed read access between user directories but ssh still worked. But after setting the home directory permissions to 00700 and restarting ssh, the login still didn't work! Then I looked at the resource page where it showed how to debug the whole ssh login session. I used two terminal windows stacked one above the other. In the top window, on the laptop (local host) I became root and executed the following: # /usr/sbin/sshd -d -p 2222 and in the lower window I logged into the remote host and, as my normal user self, executed the following: $ ssh -vv -p 2222 jv2 where 'jv2' is the host name of my laptop. Then, in the upper widow, I saw the problem. Directory '/usr/local', under which my .ssh directory is actually located, was reported to have bad permissions: Authentication refused: bad ownership or modes for directory /usr/local I checked and they were, surprisingly: # ls -ld /usr/local drwxrwsr-x 31 root staff 4096 Mar 24 07:37 /usr/local I don't know how that happened, but it must have happened during the upgrade two days ago when I continued to use my original partition mounted as '/usr/local' which was not supposed to have been touched. Anyway, as root, I fixed the permissions back to what I think is correct: # chmod 00755 /usr/local # ls -ld /usr/local drwxr-xr-x 31 root staff 4096 Mar 24 07:37 /usr/local restarted the ssh server, and the login worked as advertised--whew! Thanks to all who offered help. Best regards, -Tom
