ssh Public Keys Suddenly Stopped working for one account.

[Per olof Ljungmark]

Martin McCormick wrote:
> 	We have an account on several FreeBSD systems that is
> used for  automation. Several systems can talk to each other via
> ssh by using public keys so that scripts don't have to hold
> passwords.
> 
> 	Last night, an account that has been working for years
> suddenly won't let any of its cyber cohorts in without a
> password.
> 
> 	I bet I accidentally changed something sometime, but I
> can't figure out what.
> 
> 	The public keys hadn't changed since 2005 although
> today, I blew them all away and made new ones which still don't
> work on this one system but work on all others.
> 
> 	There is no password expiration timeout (the first thing
> I thought of) since the account is several years old.
> 
> 	All other accounts on this same system with public keys
> from their remote partners still work fine.
> 
> 	The ownership and permissions look right on the account
> directory.
> 
> 	Does this sound familiar and what else am I missing?
> 
> 	I can telnet in to the account on the localhost via the
> usual password which you can't do on an expired account.
> 
> 	I even did a stupid sort of measure which was to reset
> the password to itself and that didn't change anything.
> 
> 	Many thanks for other suggestions.

cat /var/log/auth.log ?

--per