By george
I have a Ubuntu 14.04 system up and running. I created ssh keys on my Windows Desktop using Putty and pasted the public key into the authorized_keys file for my user account.
I am able to log into the user account using Putty and NotePad++ using the keys created on my Windows desktop. (Side note for others accessing using NotePad++, you have to convert your ssh key into Open SSH format in order for NotePad++ to work).
I added the same key into the /root/.ssh/authorized_keys file and then tried to access the server using the root account but I am getting an unauthorized access error message. It then asks for the root password but it doesn’t accept that password.
If I use the DO Web console interface I am able to login as root with the password I am using so I’m a bit confused what I’ve done wrong.
I’ve read a lot of the posts and tutorials so perhaps I’ve modified a file incorrectly along the way. Ultimately I want to allow only ssh key access but before I do that I need to at least get it working with the root account.
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There are 2 things that I did just now which allowed me to access the DO server using the root account with ssh keys.
- I have NO idea how but I noticed the actual /root directory had ownership by 5245:5245 instead of root:root. I checked all users and groups on the DO server and could not find a user or group with the 5245 name. I changed the /root directory to root:root (and recursively just to be sure).
- Just to be sure I also copied the /home/george/.ssh/authorized_keys file to /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
- Just to be sure again, I rebooted the DO machine.
Once I did that I was able to ssh in to the DO machine using the Ubuntu1, Ubuntu2, and Windows PC.
At least I won’t be laying in bed tonight trying to figure out what was going on but I still wonder why things were wrong!
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