On Wednesday 30 May 2007 21:42, Mauro Faccenda wrote:
> On Wednesday 30 May 2007 16:57, Mick wrote:

> > I find it confusing.  First of all I do not have a id_rsa.
>
> it tries the default keys (id_rsa or id_dsa), if exists. 

id_rsa does not exist in my local /home/michael/.ssh/ only id_dsa is there and 
the public key that I have saved in /home/mic/.ssh/authorized_keys on the 
server is my corresponding id_dsa.pub.

> if you don't want 
> it to try it, you can use the -i parameter to ssh pointing to your private
> key (ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_dsa <user>@<server>),

Trying with the -i option also fails:
======================================
 $ ssh -v -p 22 -i /home/michael/.ssh/id_dsa mick@<blah-blah>
[snip]
debug1: Found key in /home/michael/.ssh/known_hosts:18
debug1: ssh_rsa_verify: signature correct
debug1: Enabling compression at level 6.
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS received
debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_REQUEST sent
debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_ACCEPT received
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,gssapi-with-mic,password
debug1: Next authentication method: publickey
debug1: Offering public key: /home/michael/.ssh/id_dsa
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,gssapi-with-mic,password
debug1: Next authentication method: password
======================================

> > Second, my id_dsa is my private key not my public key.  My public key is
> > id_dsa.pub
>
> but you will need your private key to be authenticated. that's why it is
> *private*.

That's right, so why does it:
======================================
debug1: Trying private key: /home/michael/.ssh/id_rsa <--this doesn't exist
debug1: Offering public key: /home/michael/.ssh/id_dsa <--this is my private 
key
======================================
> > Is this a server configuration issue, or something to do with my Gentoo
> > set up?
>
> ana in the server you'll need to put your *public* key into
> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file.

I have of course done this first.

> > PS. Not sure if this is relevant but although my user name on the server
> > is mick, for reasons better known to him the sysadmin has created my home
> > directory as /home/mic - could it be that sshd is looking for /home/mick?
>
> that messages isn't from the server, is from client running locally. but it
> doesnt matter for what you want.

It matters if the server is trying to find id_dsa.pub in a non-existing 
directory.
-- 
Regards,
Mick