SSH key authentication is not working

Solution Unverified - Updated -

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Issue

  • On our RHEL server ssh key authentication is not working. Why?

Resolution

  • Once the public key is copied to the correct file (/root/.ssh/authorized_keys.root in the case of the root user), ssh key based authentication works again.

Root Cause

  • On this specific system in /etc/ssh/sshd_config the AuthorizedKeysFiles parameter was changed from the default value to:
AuthorizedKeysFile .ssh/authorized_keys.%u
  • This change makes sshd look in a different file based on the username.

Diagnostic Steps

  • Verify that the public key authentication is not working via ssh -vvv <username>@hostname and then verify the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file on the host being accessed.

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