ssh returns "Bad owner or permissions on ~/.ssh/config"

Question

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

Answer 1

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:

• openssh check-perm.c
• openssh readconf.c
• openssh ssh_user_config fix_authorized_keys_perms

Answer 2

These commands should fix the permission problem:

chown $USER ~/.ssh/config
chmod 644 ~/.ssh/config

Prefix with sudo if the files are owned by different user (or you don't have access to them).

If more files are affected, replace config with *.

In man ssh we can read:

Because of the potential for abuse, this file must have strict permissions: read/write for the user, and not writable by others. It may be group-writable provided that the group in question contains only the user.

Answer 3

For me it was an issue with my user account not being the owner of the file

sudo chown myuser ~/.ssh/config

Answer 4

If on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and you pointed your WSL home directory to your Windows home directory (not recommended!) then chmod has no effect. Before you can chmod the files mentioned in other answers you must add

[automount]
options = "metadata"

to your /etc/wsl.conf then restart WSL (requires build 17093 or later).

Before mount says:

C: on /mnt/c type drvfs (rw,noatime,uid=1000,gid=1000,case=off)

After mount says:

C: on /mnt/c type drvfs (rw,noatime,uid=1000,gid=1000,metadata,case=off)

Answer 5

Don't forget about the group:

chown $USER:$USER ~/.ssh/config

:-)

Answer 6

I met this issue on windows 10 with vagrant ssh. And tried all the above methods, but get no luck. Finally I deleted that ssh config file and then it works!

vagrant ssh
Bad owner or permissions on C:\\Users\\Jeff/.ssh/config
del ..\.ssh\config

vagrant ssh
Welcome to Ubuntu 14.04.6 LTS (GNU/Linux 3.13.0-170-generic x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com/

  System information as of Thu Feb 27 02:23:03 UTC 2020

  System load:  0.0               Processes:              77
  Usage of /:   5.1% of 39.34GB   Users logged in:        0
  Memory usage: 21%               IP address for eth0:    10.0.2.15
  Swap usage:   0%                IP address for docker0: 172.17.0.1

  Graph this data and manage this system at:
    https://landscape.canonical.com/

New release '16.04.6 LTS' available.
Run 'do-release-upgrade' to upgrade to it.


vagrant@vagrant-ubuntu-trusty-64:~$