Unable to connect using PuTTY ssh

Question

I'm on a Windows 7 machine and have installed PuTTY. I'm trying to connect, but the authentication fails because of an incorrect password. But, the VM I'm connecting to doesn't have a password?

Here are the creds I'm trying to use:

• Host: 127.0.0.1
• Port: 2222
• Username: vagrant
• Private key: c:/users//.vagrant.d/insecure_private_key

When I open PuTTY, I put in the above credentials and click open, at which point it ask for the username and I enter vagrant, then it asks for the password, but there isn't a password, so I get access denied?

Not sure how to get around this?

Answer 1

The first thing you need is a key that PuTTY can understand. PuTTY requires a .ppk file, which is not the same as the standard openSSH key file. You can use the PuTTYgen tool to generate a key or to convert an existing openSSH to a putty key.

Once you have a key, you need to tell PuTTY about it. For this you have two options:

• Specifiy a key directly
• Use Pageant to store keys

Once you have PuTTY all setup, you need to make sure you have added your public key to the authorized_keys file. Once that is all setup you should be able to connect.

Answer 2

There are a few things that could be at play:

On the "Server"

Have you verified that the public key is in the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys and ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2 of the vagrant user?

A simple way to add:

cat id_aribtratry_name.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys{,2}

(Shell expansion should do both, but may as well double check the files).

On the Host

Nothing above suggests to me that you used Puttygen to get the key for Putty, also you can configure putty to skip asking you the other things.

1. Using Puttygen

   Open Puttygen: File > Load Private Key (in the pop-up dialog, you will need to select "All Files") to load your key.

   

   Leave everything as it is and click "Save private key"

   

   It will prompt you to confirm you don't want a password, I will leave that option up to you. Locally, not really a problem. But a server online - I would suggest it.

   Save it wherever as id_whatever.ppk

2. Set up Putty (saves you time later)

   Enter the IP and Port (As you have been doing)

   

   On the left, navigate to Connection > SSH > Auth, find your private key file in the "browse" dialog.

   

   Navigate back to Connection > Data, specify your Auto-login username

   

   Finally, go back to Session, and you can specify a name to save the session under.

   

After all that, you should be able to login. That is, assuming the IP is correct. To avoid confusion, I personally would use the actual IP of the machine. But if the LO works through the other port, that is fine to use.

Answer 3

your VM should have a different IP, not your loopback address.

Edit: from my experience with VMWare. I can't speak for all virtualization software.