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I am having a weird issue with SSH keys on my Ubuntu 18.04 Server PC. The server is just a PC that is connected to my main router at home.

I recently disabled SSH password authentication on the server to improve security, and as such, I generated SSH keys for my client PCs and transferred them to the server using ssh-copy-id user@ip (before disabling password auth). This worked fine, up until I had to restart the server, after which I keep getting the Permission denied (publickey) error.

The weird part is that if I connect the server PC to the same network powerline adapter as my client PC, which is directly connected to the main router, it works fine, but as soon as I move it back to the main router, it throws the same error.

Anyone have any idea what may be causing this?

Edit:

So turns out the issue is not related to the powerline adapter. The server does not accept SSH unless I have logged in once on the server machine, after which it works fine. But I still can't figure out how to resolve this issue either :(

Ivs
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  • Does your edit mean the problem is solved? What do you mean by "The server does not accept SSH unless I have logged in once on the server machine, after which it works fine"? Do you have to login locally first? When you ssh to a server for the first time from a "new" computer, the ssh client asks for confirmation if the server (host)is trusted (known). If you say yes, the ssh client makes a note of it. Was this the problem? – user68186 Sep 05 '19 at 14:58
  • @user68186 yep, I did mean that I have to log in locally first. It turns out the issue is that my home folder on the server is encrypted, and my authorized_keys file is in ~/.ssh. I've fixed this temporarily by moving authorized_keys out of the home folder, but this does mean that I have to enter my credentials to access home on the server. – Ivs Sep 05 '19 at 15:03
  • Please write you answer to the question in the Your Answer section below. In your question you did not mention anything about encryption. You may want to add that information in the question, in case some has a better solution. Finally after the required wait time, accept your answer (if there are no better solution) as the correct one by placing the green check mark next to it. – user68186 Sep 05 '19 at 15:09
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    Possible duplicate of Encrypted Home directory not auto mounting – user68186 Sep 05 '19 at 16:00

1 Answers1

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The issue was I had encryption enabled on my home folder on the server, which meant it could not read the authorized_keys file before I logged in. Resolved by removing the encryption on the home folder.

Ivs
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