Going back to the original post, that message looks like a PAM configuration error.
In your sshd_config, you have PAM enabled. One portion of your PAM stack could be failing, reponds with "Authentication failed" and PAM proceeds to the next plugin which prompts for a password. I'm not sure if ssh still tries to handle authentication if UsePAM is set to "yes" it could be that ssh's own authentication fails and then falls back to PAM, or vice versa check the ssh man pages for the UsePAM configuration option. There should be an explanation there. So far, I haven't seen any log messages in this discussion. Do you see any related error messages in /var/log/messages or /var/log/secure? Also, what happens when you use the -v option to ssh when connecting? That will show what authentication methods it's trying, and why they are failing: ssh -v remotehost.example.com or for more verbosity: ssh -vv remotehost or ssh -vvv remotehost -- Prentice On 10/25/2011 05:52 AM, Mezei Zoltan wrote: > Hi, > > I don't know if you have the same problem but this message showed up > in putty for me after a putty version change. The reason was that > putty tried to use GSSAPI authentication by default. You can find more > details at this URL: > > http://superuser.com/questions/312197/putty-0-61-why-do-i-see-access-denied-message-after-i-enter-my-login-id > > Hope that helps. > > On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 03:48, Alejandra Ramirez > <[email protected]> wrote: >> I believe Krzysztof doesn't have problem with the root login, he wanted only >> remark that although the system permit the root login, it says "access >> denied". >> >> Any way, I have some RHELv6.1 linux systems with the root access permited >> but I don't obtain the Krzysztof message. >> >> Best regards, >> -- >> Alejandra Ramírez >> >> El 24/10/11 14:51, Grzegorz Witkowski escribió: >> >> Hi Krzysztof, >> The default is "PermitRootLogin yes" as per man page. It is confusing a >> little bit though in my opinion as it is commented out in a default >> sshd_config file. That means you need to specifically set it to "no" and >> restart sshd if you want to disallow root access. >> I logged in as root with no problem to my fresh RHEL6.1. After adding >> PermitRootLogin no and restarting sshd it happily returns Permission denied, >> please try again. :) >> Regards, >> Ges >> On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 3:42 PM, Krzysztof Mazurek <[email protected]> >> wrote: >>> Welcome, >>> >>> on RHEL 6.1 and 6.2 beta I can see quite funny thing ... >>> >>> ssh root@machine_IP >>> .... >>> >>> login as: root >>> Access denied >>> root@machine_IP's password: >>> >>> >>> First is displayed "Access denied" and then suddenly password prompt >>> appears ... and you can login without any problem ;) >>> Is it just in my case? >>> >>> In sshd_config file I have: >>> [....] >>> # Authentication: >>> >>> #LoginGraceTime 2m >>> #PermitRootLogin yes >>> #StrictModes yes >>> #MaxAuthTries 6 >>> #MaxSessions 10 >>> [,...] >>> UsePAM yes >>> [...] >>> >>> Krzysztof Mazurk >>> >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> rhelv6-list mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/rhelv6-list >>> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> rhelv6-list mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/rhelv6-list >> >> _______________________________________________ >> rhelv6-list mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/rhelv6-list >> >> > > _______________________________________________ rhelv6-list mailing list [email protected] https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/rhelv6-list
