How do I fix SSH permission denied public key?
Emma Johnson
Updated on March 03, 2026
Solution 1: Enable Password Authentication If you want to use a password to access the SSH server, a solution for fixing the Permission denied error is to enable password login in the sshd_config file. In the file, find the PasswordAuthentication line and make sure it ends with yes .
How do I enable SSH public key authentication?
Procedure
- Use the ssh-keygen tool to create a key pair.
- Validate that the keys were generated.
- Enable key-based authentication in the /etc/ssh directory on the SSH server.
- Copy the rsa.
- If you have an existing authorized_keys file, edit it to remove any no-pty restrictions.
How do I fix SSH permission denied Publickey Mac?
Reply Report
- Login to the console on the DigitalOcean website.
- Type sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config.
- Change PasswordAuthentication from “no” to “yes” and save the file.
How do I clone using SSH?
Press Clone or download and press Use SSH in the panel that appears. The panel will change to Clone with SSH with the updated link. Copy the link by pressing the Copy To Clipboard icon. Open Git Bash and navigate to the directory in which you want to clone the repository.
How do I fix permission denied Publickey keyboard interactive?
Permission denied > (publickey,keyboard-interactive). This should be moved to serverfault. The SOLUTION in my case: Remove spaces around comma separators and everything will work fine.
What is an SSH permission denied (publickey) error?
SSH keys are a great method to use to authenticate SSH sessions without the need for a password at each login. However, like all technologies, SSH keys are not perfect, and you may encounter errors when using them. One of the most common errors when working with SSH keys is the permission denied (publickey) error.
Why is SSH public key not working?
The error suggests that the public key is the issue, which is misleading. One reason for the error may be sshd_config, the file that contains SSH server configuration.
Why is SSH refused connection here?
And hence the permissions on the copied ssh keys were changed to 777. For SSH, the file permissions are too open. It’s simply not allowed to have 777 permissions on the public or private keys. And this is why SSH refused connection here.
Why am I getting permission denied (publickey) error on VPS?
You try to connect to your VPS, only to run into the dreaded permission denied (publickey) error. Unfortunately, the reason for this differs, which can make troubleshooting harder, but generally the issue falls into four categories: Your local machine doesn’t have a matching key for your VPS server