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Connecting to Host Asks for a "Password"

This may mean that your ssh-agent was configured incorrectly. Use the following commands inside your terminal to determine any errors and report back to the PSTAT Research Computing User Group for further assistance.

1. Verify that ssh-agent is running. This will return something like Agent pid ...:

eval $(ssh-agent)

2. Now verify that your private ssh key is added to your ssh keyring. This will return something like Identity added: ...:

ssh-add $HOME/.ssh/ed25519

3. Double check that your ed25519 was added to your keyring. This will return something like 256 SHA256: ... user@host (ED25519):

ssh-add -l

4. Lastly run this oneliner where user and hostname are the respective values for the server you are trying to connect to (e.g. for Alta it would be NETID@alta.pstat.ucsb.edu) which should return nothing.

ssh user@hostname exit

5. If all of these options worked and you are still having trouble connecting to your server, you may need to add an IdentityFile section to your ssh config as follows by first "Connecting Current Window to Host":

6. Select "Configure SSH Hosts..."

7. Select your default configuration file to update (under your computer's username):

8. Specify an IdentityFile which will be the name of the private key (ed25519). An example of your final configuration for Alta should look similar to this:

Host alta
    HostName alta.pstat.ucsb.edu
    User YOUR_NETID_HERE
    IdentityFile ed25519