SSH: too many authentication failures

I am not entirely certain what the cause of this error is but it is particularly annoying when it happens on a headless system.

I think that the problem is caused by too many keys to choose from during key negotiation, or no key at all. I found this workaround.

ssh -o PubkeyAuthentication=no vince@host

Once a successful login with a password is possible, logout and copy the authentication key to the host…

ssh-copy-id -o PubkeyAuthentication=no vince@host

Then login with ssh again…

ssh vince@host

And ssh should authenticate without using a password.

If not, check the permissions on the destination’s .ssh directory and authorized_keys file

vince@host:~ %

chmod 700 .ssh

chmod 600 .ssh/authorized_keys

chown -R vince:vince .ssh