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