sftp - warning: Authentication failed

[Paolo_c]

We're seeing the following errors when attempting to SFTP to a HP-UX system running B.11.31 from VMS Blade and other HP-UX servers (but are able to successfully SFTP to the same server using different accounts), and wondering whether issue is permission related?

Error seen when using SFTP to connect from another HP-UX server

ukxxxx:/#sftp agritkon@ukxxxx
Password:
Password:
Password:
agritkon@ukxxxx's password:
Permission denied, please try again.

Error seen when connecting from VMS O/S Blade server

ftp agritkon@ukxxxx
warning: Authentication failed.
Disconnected; no more authentication methods available (No further authenticatio
n methods available.).

FATAL: ssh2 client failed to authenticate. (or you have too old ssh2 installed, check with ssh2 "-V")%TCPIP-F-SSH_FATAL, non-specific fatal error condition

Error displayed in syslog.log on destination server

Dec 2 11:07:24 ukxxxx sshd[19657]: error: PAM: Authentication failed for agritkon from ukxxxx.xxx.xxx.com
Dec 2 11:08:06 ukxxxx sshd[19657]: Failed password for agritkon from 10.x.x.x port 55197 ssh2

As i mentioned above, we are able to use SFTP and SSH to connect to other accounts on the same Server, albeit ones which are not setup with a restricted /usr/bin/false login like the Agritkon account below.

ukxxxxx:/#cat /etc/passwd | grep agritkon

agritkon:*:4001:4001:xxxxxxxxxxxxx,,:/agritkon/./:/usr/bin/false

also the restricted shell is included in /etc/shells file so not clear why its not working ? The SFTP subsystem is setup as follows ...

ukxxxxx:/#cat sshd_config | grep Sub

Subsystem       sftp    /opt/ssh/libexec/sftp-server

I did see a post online indicating that adding the following to sshd_config (or replacing existing sub-system: 

Subsystem   sftp    /opt/ssh/libexec/sftp-server above ?) might resolve an issue like this but not sure how to test changing it without potentially causing issues with other existing SFTP connections to that Server ?

Subsystem sftp internal-sftp  <<<<<<<