Removing/Unlocking a password on an embedded board

Question

I have a bit of a problem with an embedded device that I am using to connect to through ssh from my Linux machine. I'm not sure why, but suddenly, after not connecting to this board for several weeks, it asks for a password when I try to connect: ssh user@IP. I have no idea what the password could be since I never really set one. As a result, I am not at all able to either connect to this board, nor send it anything through scp, for example. However, I know a connection is established because I am able to ping the board, and the debug comments, by specifying the -l option, shows me that the connection on port 22 was established.

Therefore, is there any way around this issue? Is it possible to unblock, or remove the password on the board entirely knowing that I can't access it? The password is the only thing that is keeping me from connecting to the board, so I can do my work on it. I would appreciate any help as I've been stuck for many days on this issue.

Answer 1

It seems the SSH key that you used to login into the board is missing. The following command lists the set of keys installed on your hosts.

ssh-add -l

If you have console access to the board then you can edit the sshd.conf file in the board to disable password access. If not, get in touch with the admin to install the respective SSH key in your host.

Try SSH with -v (verbose) option to find out exactly why it fails.

ssh -v <host ip address>