SSH problem

[Leonidas Tsampros]

On Mon, Jan 09, 2006 at 12:32:00AM -0800, Robert Stevenson wrote:
> I'm able to log-in to my FreeBSD box using SSH just a
> few days ago, but now I can't. Whenever I try I only
> get to enter my username and the password prompt does
> not appear anymore. It seems authentication stops
> after I enter my username. I'm using PUTTY as a client
> 
> I can login directly to the box and I could see that
> SSHD is running. Any ideas what's wrong with it?
> 
> 

I've encountered a similar situation some time ago with a firewall i
used to run. To troobleshoot the sshd daemon, just login to your box, shut down the sshd that's running with 

$ /etc/rc.d/sshd stop

and then run sshd in debug mode with verbose output by running 

$ /usr/sbin/sshd -D -f /etc/ssh/sshd_config 

by running this command the daemon will run but it will not detach
itself in the background, but instead will output lots of debuging information.

After that try to login using putty, and take a look at the last 10-20
lines of the login process. There should be enough information about
the nature of the error.