In my experience, this type of thing usually happens when you do a recursive chmod on your /home/<yourname> directory (or, just the contents of the directory). Often times we do such a "chmod -R /home/<yourname>" because permissions can get messed up via accidental command (such as a typo when logged in as root), or due to transfer/restore of /home/<yourname> from another computer/backup.
Just some thoughts... in case you're trying to figure out how this happened in the first place. -Rick On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 12:27 PM, Dale Snell <ddsn...@frontier.com> wrote: > On Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:10:38 -0800 (PST) > Rich Shepard <rshep...@appl-ecosys.com> wrote: > > > My secure log watch summary keeps telling me there's a problem with > > ownership or permissions on ~/.ssh. Currently it's 755 and owned by > > me. I've not changed it so I don't know why I'm suddenly getting this > > error. The exact message is: > > > > Authentication refused: > > bad ownership or modes for directory /home/rshepard/.ssh : 6 > > Time(s) > > > > Since I logged in remotely via ssh 6 times yesterday (from Carson > > City and Reno), I suppose the authentication messages refer to those > > connections. But, they went through with no problems. > > > > Can someone explain what the message might be telling me? > > > > Rich > > I would guess that the permissions for ~/.ssh are probably too > liberal. You really don't need it to be world-readable. The ssh(1) > man page says about this directory "There is no general requirement to > keep the entire contents of this directory secret, but the recommended > permissions are read/write/execute for the user, and not accessible by > others." > > --Dale > > -- > A long-forgotten loved one will appear soon. > > Buy the negatives at any price. > _______________________________________________ > PLUG mailing list > PLUG@lists.pdxlinux.org > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug > _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list PLUG@lists.pdxlinux.org http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug