Ssh returns “Bad owner or permissions on ~/.ssh/config”

file-permissionsssh

When I try to ssh to another box, I get this strange error

$ ssh hostname
Bad owner or permissions on ~/.ssh/config

But I made sure that I own and have rw permissions on the file:

ls -la ~/.ssh/
total 40K
drwx------ 2 robert robert 4.0K Mar 29 11:04 ./
drwx------ 7 robert robert 4.0K Mar 29 11:04 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 robert robert 2.0K Mar 17 20:47 authorized_keys
-rw-rw-r-- 1 robert robert   31 Mar 29 11:04 config
-rw------- 1 robert robert 1.7K Aug  4  2010 id_rsa
-rw-r--r-- 1 robert robert  406 Aug  4  2010 id_rsa.pub
-rw-r--r-- 1 robert robert 6.1K Mar 29 11:03 known_hosts

Best Answer

I needed to have rw for user only permissions on config. This fixed it.

chmod 600 ~/.ssh/config

As others have noted below, it could be the file owner. (upvote them!)

chown $USER ~/.ssh/config

If your whole folder has invalid permissions here's a table of possible permissions:

Path Permission
.ssh directory (code) 0700 (drwx------)
private keys (ex: id_rsa) (code) 0600 (-rw-------)
config 0600 (-rw-------)
public keys (*.pub ex: id_rsa.pub) 0644 (-rw-r--r--)
authorized_keys (code) 0644 (-rw-r--r--)
known_hosts 0644 (-rw-r--r--)

Sources:

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