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I am trying to create my own SSH key to connect from one VM A to another VM B (both are Debian/bullseye64 systems).

Both VMs are configured to be on a public network using vagrant on my system with A on 192.168.0.103 and B on 192.168.0.104 I used the following to generate my key on VM A and named it ansible_id_rsa and also copied both the private and public key to /etc/ssh of VM A.

sudo ssh-keygen -t rsa

Once generated, I copied the ansible_id_rsa.pub content from VM A and copied it into ~/.ssh/authorized_keys of VM B. (Just to note: B already had an existing key in authorized_keys to connect to my system and I appended to it in the next line).

These are the permissions of the .ssh of both folders

drwx------ 2 vagrant vagrant 4096 Aug 18 02:53 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 vagrant vagrant 4096 Aug 18 03:09 ..
-rw------- 1 root    root    2590 Aug 18 01:50 ansible_id_rsa
-rw-r--r-- 1 root    root     563 Aug 18 01:50 ansible_id_rsa.pub
-rw------- 1 vagrant vagrant  409 Dec 30  2021 authorized_keys
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant  223 Aug 18 02:52 known_hosts

I also edited the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file to have:

PasswordAuthentication no

PermitRootLogin yes

PubKeyAuthentication yes

RSAAuthentication yes

Then I attempted connecting to VM B from VM A by running the following on VM A while in ~/.ssh:

ssh -i ansible_id_rsa -vvv [email protected]

It fails connection and prints the following on terminal:

OpenSSH_8.4p1 Debian-5+deb11u1, OpenSSL 1.1.1n  15 Mar 2022
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config
debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 19: include /etc/ssh/ssh_config.d/*.conf matched no files
debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 21: Applying options for *
debug2: resolve_canonicalize: hostname 192.168.0.104 is address
debug3: expanded UserKnownHostsFile '~/.ssh/known_hosts' -> '/home/vagrant/.ssh/known_hosts'
debug3: expanded UserKnownHostsFile '~/.ssh/known_hosts2' -> '/home/vagrant/.ssh/known_hosts2'
debug2: ssh_connect_direct
debug1: Connecting to 192.168.0.104 [192.168.0.104] port 22.
debug1: Connection established.
debug1: identity file ansible_id_rsa type 0
debug1: identity file ansible_id_rsa-cert type -1
debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_8.4p1 Debian-5+deb11u1
debug1: Remote protocol version 2.0, remote software version OpenSSH_8.4p1 Debian-5
debug1: match: OpenSSH_8.4p1 Debian-5 pat OpenSSH* compat 0x04000000
debug2: fd 3 setting O_NONBLOCK
debug1: Authenticating to 192.168.0.104:22 as 'root'
debug3: hostkeys_foreach: reading file "/home/vagrant/.ssh/known_hosts"
debug3: record_hostkey: found key type ECDSA in file /home/vagrant/.ssh/known_hosts:2
debug3: load_hostkeys: loaded 1 keys from 192.168.0.104
debug3: order_hostkeyalgs: have matching best-preference key type [email protected], using HostkeyAlgorithms verbatim
debug3: send packet: type 20
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT sent
debug3: receive packet: type 20
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT received
debug2: local client KEXINIT proposal

debug2: compression ctos: none,[email protected],zlib
debug2: compression stoc: none,[email protected],zlib
debug2: languages ctos:
debug2: languages stoc:
debug2: first_kex_follows 0
debug2: reserved 0
debug2: peer server KEXINIT proposal

debug2: compression ctos: none,[email protected]
debug2: compression stoc: none,[email protected]
debug2: languages ctos:
debug2: languages stoc:
debug2: first_kex_follows 0
debug2: reserved 0
debug1: kex: algorithm: curve25519-sha256
debug1: kex: host key algorithm: ecdsa-sha2-nistp256
debug1: kex: server->client cipher: [email protected] MAC: <implicit> compression: none
debug1: kex: client->server cipher: [email protected] MAC: <implicit> compression: none
debug3: send packet: type 30
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_ECDH_REPLY
debug3: receive packet: type 31
debug1: Server host key: ecdsa-sha2-nistp256 SHA256:fqpDpY0+XthUBnzv4qVjeL7dErgkvw9ocdiBRR4un38
debug3: hostkeys_foreach: reading file "/home/vagrant/.ssh/known_hosts"
debug3: record_hostkey: found key type ECDSA in file /home/vagrant/.ssh/known_hosts:2
debug3: load_hostkeys: loaded 1 keys from 192.168.0.104
debug1: Host '192.168.0.104' is known and matches the ECDSA host key.
debug1: Found key in /home/vagrant/.ssh/known_hosts:2
debug3: send packet: type 21
debug2: set_newkeys: mode 1
debug1: rekey out after 134217728 blocks
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS
debug3: receive packet: type 21
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS received
debug2: set_newkeys: mode 0
debug1: rekey in after 134217728 blocks
debug1: Will attempt key: ansible_id_rsa RSA SHA256:i9s/9B3nDrmfC1fJsiTMs7FqeATpPKpvXFInHfwXMC4 explicit
debug2: pubkey_prepare: done
debug3: send packet: type 5
debug3: receive packet: type 7
debug1: SSH2_MSG_EXT_INFO received

debug3: receive packet: type 6
debug2: service_accept: ssh-userauth
debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_ACCEPT received
debug3: send packet: type 50
debug3: receive packet: type 51
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey
debug3: start over, passed a different list publickey
debug3: preferred gssapi-with-mic,publickey,keyboard-interactive,password
debug3: authmethod_lookup publickey
debug3: remaining preferred: keyboard-interactive,password
debug3: authmethod_is_enabled publickey
debug1: Next authentication method: publickey
debug1: Offering public key: ansible_id_rsa RSA SHA256:i9s/9B3nDrmfC1fJsiTMs7FqeATpPKpvXFInHfwXMC4 explicit
debug3: send packet: type 50
debug2: we sent a publickey packet, wait for reply
debug3: receive packet: type 51
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey
debug2: we did not send a packet, disable method
debug1: No more authentication methods to try.
[email protected]: Permission denied (publickey).

Can someone tell me what all might I be doing wrong? I tried out the various things I found across similar threads but I couldn't get them to work.

PS: Had to remove parts of the -vvv log as it was getting marked as spam while posting the question

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  • It seems like you have a mix up of the users root and vagrant on your VM B. Please show the sshd log entries from your connection attempt on VM B.
    – Gerald Schneider
    Aug 18, 2022 at 5:43
  • "and also copied both the private and public key to /etc/ssh of VM A.". This is not typically done, the keys usually are in ~/.ssh. Also, did you restart SSH after changing configuration?
    – Tero Kilkanen
    Aug 18, 2022 at 5:48
  • @TeroKilkanen ok so I shouldn't copy it to etc/ssh. I did that after seeing that only keys in etc/ssh were being tried if not explicitly mentioned. And yes I did restart ssh after changing config. But it didn't change anything. Perhaps I restarted the wrong way, I ran sudo systemctl restart sshd.service
    – Ironscar
    Aug 18, 2022 at 5:56
  • It seems you were right about the mixup between root and vagrant users. I ran sudo ssh -i ansible_id_rsa [email protected] and I was able to ssh into VM B because I added the public key to authorized_keys while being user vagrant. But I still want to be able to access B with user root if possible instead of vagrant. I tried going to ~/.ssh in root but it doesn't seem to exist. Any idea how to get around this?
    – Ironscar
    Aug 18, 2022 at 19:09

1 Answer 1

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OK finally found the answer. Looks like I had added the public key to authorized_keys of user vagrant in VM B while trying to access user root of VM B over SSH which is why it didn't work.

I changed user to root on VM B and then went to its home(~) directory. While it didn't have .ssh there, I created it and then added a file to it called authorized_keys, added the public key there and then restarted ssh service with sudo systemctl restart ssh.service.

Now I can ssh into VM B from VM A as root.

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