/Guides/FreeBSD/Networking/

General Information

I ran FreeBSD 5.2 for a long time with the default SSHd and then decided to upgrade to 5.3-STABLE.  I normally use SecureCRT as my SSH client and I like password authentication.  After I upgraded to 5.3, I could no longer logon using password authentication and I had to switch to keyboard interactive.  This disallowed me from logging in with sftp from remote locations which really bummed me out.  Here is the fix I found.

Note:  This fix only affects people running FreeBSD 5.3 with the default SSHd -- not OpenSSHd.

Requirements

1. Local root access on the box or be able to su to root.
   
2. A SSH client that supports ANSI colors such as puTTy or SecureCRT (if you aren't on the box).

Configuration

The steps are really simple and I felt silly for not thinking of it sooner.

#	echo "PasswordAuthentication=yes" >> /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Now, just restart sshd.

#	/etc/rc.d/sshd reload

There you go.  Now you can enjoy password authentication again.

Author: Jon LaBass
jon at bsdguides dot org

You might want to change s/killall/kill... kill is actually the one that goes by PIDs by default.

Thanks for catching that.  All fixed.

/etc/rc.d/sshd restart will do the job as well ;-)

Yes, but then you will lose your current connection if you are connected remotely.  If you just restart the server process, then you will keep your current session and the changes apply to new connections.

This must only affect upgrades to 5.3. With my fresh install the option was there it just had to be uncommented.

The option was always there, but the key point is to enable it by either uncommenting it or just adding it.  Either method works.  I just used the echo command to alleviate the need to open a text editor.