Strange SSH problem

[Belinda Dermody]

I have been running ssh connections between two HP box's 11i and 11.0 and Sun Solaris systems runnning 2.8 without any problems for years and using public key authenicaton. 95%+ of my connections have been one way from the 11i to the 11.0 and to the solaris systems, scp files to and retreiving from. But the other day I ssh over to one of the Sun boxs and decided to SSH back to the 11i system and it asked me for passwd authenication
So I ssh over to the 11.0 box and ssh back to the 11i system and had no problems. So the unique area is ssh from the Solaris Sun2.8 sytem to either of the HP systems 111 and 11.0 it will fail on the public key authenication. I checked the permissions of the home directories (and .ssh) on the Sun systems and they are set correctly for ssh 755.

Running SSH V 3.81.002 on the HP systems and runing Openssh 3.4p1 on the Sun Solaris2.8 sytems

[Steven E. Protter]

I would want to get those Sun Systems a little more current.

There are bugs that can cause these symptoms that were solved in later openssh releases.

Permmissions are very important on the files in .ssh

Those guidelines need to be followed precisely.

SEP

[Denver Osborn]

Was a public/private key pair ever setup on the solaris box and then the pubkey put in the target hpux box's authorized_keys file? If the $HOME/identity.pub id_dsa.pub or id_rsa.pub don't match any entries in the target's authorized_keys, publickey auth will fail.

if none of this helps troubleshooting, post a reply w/ this output.

from solaris box

ssh -vvv -i ~/.ssh/identity -o PreferredAuthentications=publickey hpux_hostname

replace id_dsa w/ whatever pubkey was used for the target hpux box's authorized_keys file.

Also check the hpux's syslog for sshd messages that might point out a problem.


Hope this helps,
-denver

[Belinda Dermody]

With further review and testing, the public keys work, after updating the keys on the sun side. But I have two other sun systems that when trying to ssh to the 11i as root gets denied permission to come in, I am lookign at them and the firewall that is in between.

As always thanks for the quick response...