[SOLVED] Help please: how to enable SSH password authentication under FreeBSD 6.2? Solved - but not in an expected way

[Olaf Greve]

Hi again,

Well as mentioned yesterday, I couldn't let this one go by without at 
least trying to figure out the real reason, so I experimented somewhat 
further.

> The issue of ssh1 vs. ssh2 appears to already be clarified, so I won't
> go into it again.

Yes, indeed. I myself yesterday came to realise that I had incorrectly 
used the term SSH1 for password authentication, whereas it's basically 
just a different handshake and encryption protocol. My bad. :p

Then:

> It shouldn't.  That's odd, as there's no reason to use SSH1 with FreeBSD
> 5.4 -- SSH2 worked just fine in 5.X.  I'd investigate your puTTY installation/
> config, as it sounds to be corrupt.

Well, I did indeed run the daemon in debug mode, and from the traces I 
gather that the handshaking doesn't work properly. Towards the end of 
the traces, we find:

debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT sent
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT received
debug1: kex: client->server 3des-cbc hmac-sha1 none
debug1: kex: server->client 3des-cbc hmac-sha1 none
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEXDH_INIT
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS
Connection closed by 192.168.1.103
debug1: do_cleanup
debug1: do_cleanup

And it never (or well, hardly ever) seems to get past that point.

I then checked if perhaps I could configure anything in PuTTY regarding 
the handshaking or so, and found very few options there (all yielding no 
better luck in connecting).

Then, I checked the PuTTY version, and found that it was "release-0.50", 
whereas I read you used versions 0.58 and 0.59. D/L-ed version 0.59 and 
that works fine!

Sooo, indeed the PuTTY installation I had was flaky. For some reason it 
did work fine with my FreeBSD 5.4 installation, dunno why ?!?

Good, glad this one is solved and that it turned out to be such a 
trivial thing!

Tnx for your help, and cheers!
Olafo