Hi,
I am unable to connect via SSH without password (ssh-copy-id was launched) to a
VM running Debian Stable.
After some investigations, it is most likely a permission issue
May 1 15:32:42 vm sshd[131848]: debug1: trying public key file
/home/user/.ssh/authorized_keys
May 1 15:32:42 vm sshd[131848]: debug1: fd 5 clearing O_NONBLOCK
May 1 15:32:42 vm sshd[131848]: Authentication refused: bad ownership or modes
for directory /home/user
On this system (not installed by me), my user has an UID and GID of 0 in
/etc/passwd. Several users share root privileges like this on the server.
After a ssh connexion (it is working with password authentification) done as
'user'
$ ssh user@server
user@server's password: ....
I am directly connected as root
root@server:~# whoami
root
root@server:~# su user
root@server:~# whoami
root
.ssh files of user directory are owned by root
# ls -la /home/user/.ssh/
total 4
drwx------ 2 root user 29 1 mai 15:38 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 1001 user 106 11 févr. 11:10 ..
-rw------- 1 root user 395 1 mai 15:38 authorized_keys
I tried to change the owner of the file authorized_keys (I guess if it matches
the user used in ssh connexion command, it will allow the ssh connexion by
keys) but chown fails silently.
root@server:~# chown user /home/user/.ssh/authorized_keys
root@server:~# ls -la /home/user/.ssh/authorized_keys
-rw------- 1 root user 395 1 mai 15:38 .ssh/authorized_keys
I tried a `chattr -i` on the file, unsuccessfully.
If I launch again ssh-copy-id with root@server instead of user@server, I can
connect without password. But I would prefer to connect with my user.
What is my best move here?
