Passwordless linux account converted to Chroot jailed sftp now requires password?

Question

I created a user and did an RSA key exchange for a passwordless connection. This worked.

I also created a chroot jailed sftp only user. This also worked.

I then created a third user. I set up the passwordless connection as above, and then jailed the account. Prior to jailing, the connection worked without the password. After jailing, a password is required. And the jail works.

How can I have a user with both?

PS - I've read that the 2.6 kernel (which I'm using) looks for a 2.4 library which is no longer there, and jumps to password authentication. But the article did not list either the rogue library nor a solution.

Answer 1

Usually the password prompt means that your public key wasn't accepted, which often means permissions problems on $HOME, $HOME/.ssh, etc. Regardless, you should check the syslog and see why sshd is reporting the error. Use LogLevel INFO in your sshd_config file to get some more helpful log messages.