Help please: how to enable SSH password authentication under FreeBSD 6.2?

[Olaf Greve]

Hi Garrett,

Firstly: thanks for your reply!

> Just looking at your config everything appears to be fine. If you don't 
> have PAM enabled or don't want it enabled though you should uncomment 
> this line in your config:
> 
> # Change to no to disable PAM authentication
> ChallengeResponseAuthentication no

Hmmm, I shall try that, and I am wondering now whether PAM is or isn't 
enabled. I basically just installed FreeBSD, choosing the 'all' option 
when it asked for what to include in the installation. As for packages, 
I only selected cvs-without-gui, and then went ahead with the 
installation (I chose not to enable SSH through inetd, but I did enable 
it through the explicit question whether I wanted or not to do so). 
Now... Does this method perhaps not enable PAM yet?

As for the previous installation: I clearly recall having had a similar 
(or the very same) issue too, but I just don't remember how I ended up 
solving it (this was over 1,5 years ago, and I didn't take notes :o ). 
Come to think of it, I'm not certain anymore now whether this problem 
(and it's solution) surfaced when first configuring SSHD (as I think was 
the case), or when setting up rsync synchronisation between the two 
machines.

Key question here: if the above steps do not already implicitly enable 
PAM, how can I do so myself? Is this done in the kernel, by changing the 
config and recompiling and installing it, or can this done somehow 
through rc.conf (or by enabling/installing/configuring it otherwise)?

Then regarding your further questions:

> 1) Did you restart your daemon?

Yes, by doing a "kill -s HUP <sshd pid>" (not by doing an 
"/etc/rc.d/sshd restart" or so). I did check the SSHD process id 
afterwards, and indeed that was restarted.

> 2) Are you using the ssh available in the base system or ports?

The base system one. I did already update the ports tree (with the 
ports-supfile set to all ports), but I haven't rebuilt sshd. Do you 
think this could make the difference?

Thanks again, I hope this further information (and questions) helps for 
determining the cause...

Cheers,
Olafo