Adding a public key to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys does not log me in automatically

Question

I added the public SSH key to the authorized_keys file. ssh localhost should log me in without asking for the password.

I did that and tried t

Answer 1

Look in file /var/log/auth.log on the server for sshd authentication errors.

If all else fails, then run the sshd server in debug mode:

sudo /usr/sbin/sshd -ffffd -p 2200

Then connect from the client:

ssh user@host -p 2200

In my case, I found the error section at the end:

    debug1: userauth_pubkey: test whether pkalg/pkblob are acceptable for RSA SHA256:6bL+waAtghY5BOaY9i+pIX9wHJHvY4r/mOh2YaL9RvQ [preauth]
==> debug2: userauth_pubkey: disabled because of invalid user [preauth]
    debug2: userauth_pubkey: authenticated 0 pkalg ssh-rsa [preauth]
    debug3: userauth_finish: failure partial=0 next methods="publickey,password" [preauth]
    debug3: send packet: type 51 [preauth]
    debug3: receive packet: type 50 [preauth]

With this information I realized that my sshd_config file was restricting logins to members of the ssh group. The following command fixed this permission error:

sudo usermod -a -G ssh NEW_USER