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willbeeler
Asked: 2012-03-07 05:39:30 +0800 CST

Can't Login to my Server via SSH, and the password is correct

  • 772

I'm using Linode, and I've asked around on the IRC channels, but no one seems to know. I've logged into my server via LISH (reference), and I used the correct password, and everything went fine. However, I need to login via SSH/FTP, and I can't. It keeps on giving me "permission denied". I know the password is correct because I reset it via LISH, and I know I've got the login method right because I've logged into my server before using the exact same commands. I sure hope this doesn't turn out to be some noob issue, or I'm going to be quite frustrated.

ssh password login

6 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You need to run ssh (the client, and possibly the server) with more verbosity to understand why authentication is failing. For the client, run

    ssh -vvv username@host

    On the server end, check the logs. /var/log/auth.log will give you a pretty good idea about what happens when you try to login, look for messages that contain sshd. There are a variety of reasons why authentication could be failing, ranging from simple (you aren't using the right username) to more complicated (sshd is configured to use the wrong authentication system).

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  2. in my case our IT department had setup PAM stuff with rules that broke my login. followed @pestilence 's reply to see error, ended up commenting out AllowGroups in /etc/ssh/sshd_config, which was setup to some IT stuff:

    UsePAM yes
#AllowGroups <some IT groups>
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  3. I had the same incident, I tried all solutions above and they didn't help, the final cause was because i tried to change my shell to fish using chsh.

    I had console access to the machine, so i made tail -f /var/log/auth.log, so i found the error message user is invalid because shell /bin/fish is not found.

    I was also unable to run chsh again because of the same login issue, so i made a symlink from /bin/fish to /bin/sh, and i was able to log in immediately.

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  4. Try using a different port. Seems that the SSH port the server was using was being used by another service, and I was getting some verrrrry wonky results.

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  5. In my case I edited /etc/shadow- with a text editor, as file manager was the only access I had. Even after I put the original hash string back somehow it didnt work. So after I reset a password with hosting panel all became working.

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  6. In my case, this 73rd line in sshd_config was the culprit. No where found this solution, just struck it with luck. Either comment it out (or make it 'yes'):

    KbdInteractiveAuthentication no

    Perhaps this prohibits keyboard interaction while logging into remote server.

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