SSH key question

[MR ZenWiz]

On Fri, Dec 11, 2020 at 4:03 AM Colin Watson <cjwatson at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Dec 10, 2020 at 10:09:10AM -0800, MR ZenWiz wrote:
> > However, from my own laptop, I can't get password-free access, via ssh
> > or rsync, to my base desktop.  I either put up with the password
> > prompt, or ssh to the base from the laptop and run the file transfers
> > from the remote base login to/from the laptop because that way it does
> > not require passwords.
>
> Since it appeared from your client debug logs as though your client was
> indeed attempting to authenticate using a public key, your best bet
> would be to look at /var/log/auth.log on the server to find out why it's
> denying that public key authentication attempt.
>
I looked in the auth.log and queried the message on the web.

The message says:

Authentication refused: bad ownership or modes for directory /home/admar

The solution listed is to change the home directory to deny group and
other write permissions on the home directory and set the permissions
for ~/.ssh to 700 and ~/.ssh/authorized_keys to 600.

I had my home set for 775, and write access to the users group (I have
a good reason for this), so when I changed it to 755, the
password-less login from the laptop worked.

That would make perfect sense except for one minor detail: I have the
exact same 775 permissions with the same group set on my laptop's home
directory, and no issue whatsoever doing the password-less login from
the desktop to the laptop.

I'm still stumped.

Anyone?

Thanks.

Mark