Masao Kitamura

If your SSH public key authentication is failing with errors like this:

$ ssh -vvv myhost.com
debug3: authmethod_is_enabled publickey
debug1: Next authentication method: publickey
debug1: Offering public key: /home/kitamura/.ssh/id_dsa
debug3: send_pubkey_test
debug2: we sent a publickey packet, wait for reply

…try these permissions on the server:

server$ chmod go-w ~/    (same as 755)
server$ chmod 700 ~/.ssh
server$ chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

more troubleshooting tips

On the destination server, remove the known_hosts file:

rm ~/.ssh/known_hosts

Also, try this in your /etc/hosts.allow file

/etc/hosts.allow:
SSHD: ALL


“c:\program files\putty\pageant.exe” “c:\documents and settings\esumbar\pka-putty\mykey.ppk”

Edit your ssh_config file like this:

/etc/ssh/ssh_config

ServerAliveInterval 30

This will cause your SSH client to send a keep alive ping every 30 seconds to the server.