I set up a small low-resource VPS a few years ago to use mainly as a
light-use xmpp server. I got Dropbear operating there so I could admin it.
Dropbear seemed a good choice since system resources were so anemic. I
recall it being quite challenging to get key-pair authentication to
finally work there, though I can't recall many details about how I finally
succeeded.
Sometime during the interval after I set that up, key-pair authentication
has stopped working again. So I've had to re-enable username/password
authentication. I'm now trying to determine why it happened that the
key-pair authentication stopped working and am hoping I can somehow
re-enable it.
The VPS runs Ubuntu 16.04 (EMS), so the version of Dropbear there is a bit
outdated (v2017.75). Since that release was made, various changes have
happened to openssh that may, I assume, make it incompatible with this
version of Dropbear. I am using ssh when I try to connect to the VPS, btw.
So I'd like to start off by just asking whether the challenges I am
encountering as I try to re-enable key-pair authentication are likely
related to the version mismatch between the Dropbear I have installed on
the VPS and the much more current version of openssh I have on the home
computer from which I'm trying to connect?
Input on that question will be appreciated. If it seems unreasonable to
expect modern versions of openssh to interoperate with a Dropbear server
dating to 2017, I will need to just give up on it and seek some other
solution.
Thank you
- Dropbear difficulties due to outdated version? James Miller
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