OpenSSH server Authentication refused

Solution 1:

What about the message that is displayed twice in the debug logs:

Authentication refused: bad ownership or modes for directory /root

Fix the permissions of /root and see where that takes you.

Solution 2:

I just had the exact same case: bad ownership on /xxx (the top folder).

All the other usual ssh requirements were met in my case:

• no 'w' for go anywhere (group or others)
• 700 for .ssh
• 600 for .ssh/authorized_keys

And yet, an sshd -d session consistently shown

Authentication refused: bad ownership or modes for directory /xxx

The only discrepency I found is that /xxx/yyy was own by root, while /xxx was owned by "aUser".

I did as root a chown root:root /xxx

And the error went away.

Solution 3:

The problem was printed in your log:

  Authentication refused: bad ownership or modes for directory /root

Check the permissions of the root user's home directory, /root.

An example of working permissions from a live server:

error@www ~ $ ls -ld /root
drwx------. 6 root root 4096 Oct 16 19:12 /root

Solution 4:

A more comprehensive answer is found on this blog post: http://www.daveperrett.com/articles/2010/09/14/ssh-authentication-refused/

The TL;DR version of it is (the permissions are fairly specific):

chmod go-w /home/your-user
chmod 700  /home/your-user/.ssh
chmod 600  /home/your-user/.ssh/authorized_keys*

Additionally, if your user's home dir is a symlink, you want to follow it and chmod go-w / chmod 755 to that as well.