Strav's blog

It's frustrating to deal with SSH connection issues - particularly when using a private/public key pair which *should* let you log in without a password but doesn't.  I've troubleshot these issues a number of different ways in the past, adding a '-VVV' switch for crazy debugging levels on the client, checking log files on the server, etc.  Recently, I came across a different way of troubleshooting server side which is my new favorite way - running a new copy of sshd on the server in debug mode on a non-standard port.  When the ssh server is run in debug mode, it doesn't daemonize so all messages are displayed on the screen immediately, rather than digging through log files.  Also, running on a non-standard port means you are almost guaranteed to be the only one connecting so you don't have to eliminate other connections to troubleshoot your issue.   Below is the command and a link back to the page that I discovered this from.

/usr/sbin/sshd -d -p 2222

Trying to SSH in to remote computer but still asking for password