Ssh – Why is the ssh connection failing

cygwinssh

I'm trying to use SSH authentication between my WinXP desktop running Cygwin and a Mac laptop, and for the life of me, I can't get it working. My public key is on the macbook in the authorized_keys directory, and my private key is sitting there, all nice and happy in my ~/.ssh folder.

Here are the relevant lines from running ssh -vv user@server

debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,keyboard-interactive
debug1: Next authentication method: publickey
debug1: Trying private key: /c/cygwin/home/beerhalj/.ssh/identity
debug1: Trying private key: /c/cygwin/home/beerhalj/.ssh/id_rsa
debug1: Trying private key: /c/cygwin/home/beerhalj/.ssh/id_dsa
debug1: read PEM private key done: type DSA
debug2: we sent a publickey packet, wait for reply
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,keyboard-interactive
debug2: we did not send a packet, disable method

It looks like my server sends a publickey packet, then doesn't send a packet and disables. Why? Or, what possible things should I try? Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

As per SparX suggestion, I cat'd my sshd_config and there are only three non-comment lines

Protocol 2
SyslogFacility AUTHPRIV
Subsystem sftp/usr/libexec/sftp-server

Best Answer

Make sure that the authorized_keys file as well as the .ssh folder and your home folder aren't writable by anyone but yourself. Sshd disregards it otherwise.