Question
SSH error - Permission denied (public key).
- Posted on February 3, 2017
- Getting StartedQuickstartUbuntu
Asked by tiagobertolo
I followed this to try to add authorized keys to my droplet. I ended up loosing permissions in my starting machine and not being able to log in from the second machine either.
I could not type ‘~’ in the web console, so i am not able to authorize more keys either.
What can i do to overcome the: “Permission denied (public key).” error?
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@tiagobertolo
When logged in as
root,/root/.sshis equal to~/.ssh, so if for one reason or another, you’re unable to use~, then/root/.sshwill work as a direct path.In regards to
/root/.ssh/authorized_keys, these are the public keys for therootuser that are allowed to login. So if you’re attempting to login to SSH using a command such as:… then
private_keyneeds to be associated with one of the public keys inauthorized_keyson your Droplet, else authentication will fail.Not sure if this is your problem, but it was mine! I didn’t realise that just because the root user had authorized_keys, doens’t mean all the other users created do. I.e. if you create a VPS and Digital Ocean automatically adds SSH keys, these only go to the root user, so you have to mkdir .ssh for your new user and copy the SSH keys there and make sure the permissions correct.
Did you check /var/log/auth.log?