Authentication refused: bad ownership or modes for directory /root

Question

I'm trying to SSH into my remote VPS with Debian onboard. Running sshd in debug mode, I found that:

Authentication refused: bad ownership or modes for directory /root

I tried setting permissions as I found in Google:

chmod go-w ~/
chmod 700 ~/.ssh
chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

But it still refuses auth with pubkey and asks for password, with the same message in debug. What am I doing wrong?

to round out the error-checking, what is the ownership of /root? `ls -ld /root` — Jeff Schaller, Oct 23 '19 at 12:56
Additionally, according to https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/36687/117549, your home directory (`/root` here) must only be readable to you, so `go-w` may not be enough. — Jeff Schaller, Oct 23 '19 at 12:57
Re-run your chmod commands referencing /root/ explicitly. It is not clear from your context what `~/` is. Do `chmod go-w /root/`, etc. And as @JeffSchaller requests, edit your post to add the output of `ls -ld /root` and `ls -ld /root/.ssh` — Jim L., Oct 23 '19 at 18:06
It works, but ssh service display log: `ssh.service: Found left-over process 1704 (sshd) in control group while starting unit. Ignoring.` and `This usually indicates unclean termination of a previous run, or service implementation deficiencies.` — Seiden, Mar 03 '23 at 07:05

score 12 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 24 '19 at 20:52

12

Well, I should really thank @jeff-schaller, it was broken ownership of folder. I've done

chown root /root
chown root /root/.ssh

And from there it worked flawlessly.

answered Oct 24 '19 at 20:52

keddad

3

I had to use both:

chown root /root
chown root /root/.ssh

And then:
`chmod go-w ~/`
`chmod 700 ~/.ssh`
`chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys`

It worked after that.

– Damon Hill Jul 22 '22 at 23:04

1 Answers1