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I am trying to connect to my own CentOS server using SSH; I am able to connect fine with a password; I am trying to connect with my public key, but the server does not attempt public key authentication. I have followed all instructions on this page in the CentOS wiki, and verified the following things:

  • I am running CentOS 6.0 or later

  • My sshd_config has the following:

    PermitRootLogin no
PubkeyAuthentication Yes
RSAAuthentication yes
AuthorizedKeysFile .ssh/authorized_keys

  • I have created a private key in the .ssh/ folder in my home directory on the client

  • The full text of the public key (generated by ssh-keygen) takes up a single line in the .ssh/authorized_keys file in my home directory on the server.

  • I have the following permission modes set on both client and server:

    chmod 700 .ssh
chmod 600 .ssh/*
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1 Answer 1

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According this issue report on the CentOS web site, this is caused by an upstream "feature" in SELinux; if SELinux is enforcing, it will prevent the server from using pubkey authentication. There is no indication that this behavior will change in the near future. To see if this problem applies to you, type sestatus and see if it reports "Current mode" as enforcing.

I know of two workarounds.

  • You can set SELinux to permissive mode. Type setenforce 0 to change the policy immediately, and then open /etc/selinux/config and make sure SELINUX=permissive.

  • Restore the file to the correct security context:

    restorecon -R -v ~$USER/.ssh
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  • Was this indeed the problem?
    – Andy Shinn
    Jun 23, 2012 at 0:38
  • It was, although my sysadmin later told me that SELinux was not supposed to be running in the first place.
    – ILikeFood
    Jun 23, 2012 at 0:40

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