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I am trying to access a university server using putty SSH however I don't have a key, all i have is a username and password. Whenever I try to connect I either get the no supported authentication error (server sent public key). Any advice?

hamzah
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2 Answers2

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Whenever I try to connect I either get the no supported authentication error (server sent public key).

The SSH server always sends a list of acceptable auth methods. In this case, it sent a list consisting only of one method – "public key" – so that's the only method PuTTY will try. (Which it cannot try because you don't have a keypair, so it'll just give up.)

my supervisor said the server has been set up for password authentification however I haven't found where I can do that on putty

There is no option for that. If the server allowed password authentication, PuTTY would have attempted to use it automatically.

If an auth method is disabled on the server, there's nothing a client can do to make it work – sure it can try requesting it, but the server will just refuse anyway, for the same reason why it didn't offer that mechanism in the first place. So you probably won't find any client which will bother including an option to try disabled mechanisms.

It's possible that you might have gotten the wrong server address; or that someone else changed its configuration and your supervisor was unaware of that.

Is my best option using sshd instead of putty?

No matter what client you use, it won't be able to use auth mechanisms that the server doesn't offer.

Note that 'sshd' is the OpenSSH server (daemon); the OpenSSH client is 'ssh'.

grawity
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If the server was truly set to not accept password authentication, you need in this case ask your supervisor the missing authentication key (and how to use it).

If your supervisor is convinced that he has set up access via password to the server, this might be blocked by a wrong setting on the server where password authentication was not fully enabled.

You haven't mentioned your operating system and putty version, so I can't give a detailed answer.

The SSH server configuration file may in most cases be found in Linux inside the file /etc/ssh/sshd_config.

The two important settings here are:

  • PasswordAuthentication to yes
  • ChallengeResponseAuthentication to yes

If changing any of the above, the ssh system service needs restarting (reboot might be simpler).

harrymc
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