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Ssh key authentication insist on password

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title: 'SSH Key Authentication insist on password'
date: '2015-11-07T14:27:24-06:00'
status: publish
permalink: /ssh-key-authentication-insist-on-password
author: admin
excerpt: ''
type: post
id: 898
category:
    - SSH
tag: []
post_format: []

I recently spent a lot of time trying to figure out why a private key I exported from putty was not working right on Linux. My issue was I kept getting prompted for a password no matter what.

One clue that may or may not show the issue in the SSHD logs I was NOT seeing "debug1: ssh_rsa_verify: signature correct" when keyed authentication failed and switched to password.

I fixed my problem by deleting the public key in the Linux client .ssh folder. So most likely while copying keys from Windows and putty I must have gotten a mismatch on private/public pair.

If you need it you can re-create it as follow:
rosso@rrosso-VirtualBox:~/.ssh$ ssh-keygen -y -f id_rsa > id_rsa.pub

$ ssh root@usli-utility.mgmt.asg.ad
Last login: Sat Nov 7 14:14:08 2015 from 192.168.38.104
Oracle Corporation SunOS 5.11 11.3 September 2015
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