Linux – how to enable password login on ssh server

By default password based on login may be disabled on you Linux Server. Even though it is better to use private and public key for remote ssh login, there are times you need to use password based login. Here are steps to enable password login on Ubuntu Linux. For other flavours of Linux, the process should be similar.

Check ssh supported methods

Check ssh supported methods using:

$ ssh -o PreferredAuthentications=none localhost
Permission denied (publickey).

If password is not present in supported methods in brackets above, that means ssh server does not support password based authentication.

Edit PasswordAuthentication value in sshd_config

Open /etc/ssh/sshd_config using sudo

$ sudo vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Change PasswordAuthentication value to yes

PasswordAuthentication yes

Restart ssh

Restart ssh using the following command:

$ sudo service ssh restart
ssh stop/waiting
ssh start/running, process 7068

Now check supported methods again:

$ ssh -o PreferredAuthentications=none localhost
Permission denied (publickey,password).

This time you should see password in supported methods.