🟠 High   ⏱ 5–30 min  Last verified: 19 May 2026
Affected versions: RHEL 10.0 RHEL 10.1

📖 ~1 min read

Table of contents
  1. Symptom & Impact
  2. Environment & Reproduction
  3. Root Cause Analysis
  4. Quick Triage
  5. Step-by-Step Diagnosis
  6. Solution – Primary Fix
  7. Solution – Alternative Approaches
  8. Verification & Acceptance Criteria
  9. Rollback Plan
  10. Prevention & Hardening
  11. Related Errors & Cross-Refs
  12. References & Further Reading

Symptom & Impact

Key-based auth fails and operators fall back to passwords or lose remote access.

Environment & Reproduction

Typically occurs after user home migrations or backup restores.

ssh -vvv user@host

Root Cause Analysis

File mode, ownership, or SELinux label on ~/.ssh prevents sshd from accepting keys.

Quick Triage

Inspect sshd log entries and validate target user home attributes.

sudo journalctl -u sshd -n 100 --no-pager

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Check permissions recursively and verify SELinux contexts on user key files.

ls -ld ~/.ssh && ls -l ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
Illustrative mockup for rhel-10 — sshd_pubkey_denied
sshd public key denied logs — Illustrative mockup — Progressive Robot

Solution – Primary Fix

Correct modes/ownership and relabel user SSH files to expected contexts.

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chmod 700 ~/.ssh && chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys && chown -R user:user ~/.ssh && sudo restorecon -Rv /home/user/.ssh
Illustrative mockup for rhel-10 — restorecon_ssh_home
Fixing SSH directory contexts — Illustrative mockup — Progressive Robot

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Use centralized identity with approved authorized keys command backend.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

Public key authentication succeeds and password auth can remain disabled.

Rollback Plan

Restore original key files from backup and reapply prior sshd_config if needed.

Prevention & Hardening

Automate permission/context checks in provisioning and account management workflows.

Related: too open private key, denied by Match blocks, and account lockouts.

Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for rhel-10.

View all rhel-10 tutorials on the Tutorials Hub →

Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.

References & Further Reading

RHEL SSH hardening and SELinux user home context references.

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