Hi all, I'm having a real problematic time trying to authenticate a user on a win client, through a program called KoalaTerm, it's something to do with how this program authenticates the linux server connection as I've managed to connect easily with Putty, however I need to be able to use this KoalaTerm program as it has key features that are sorely missing from Putty.

As far as I can understand it is initially reading the public key from the /etc/ssh folder and using that to verify a connection, however it gets stuck on the user verification, does anyone know how ssh searches for known users? that is does it automatically trowel through the /home directories looking for /.ssh folders? or is there a way to direct it to certain users via ssh_config or sshd_config?

Any help would be appreciated.

I am by no means and expert. But I believe SSH uses PAM ( plugable authentication module ) to decide how to check user credentials. So you can configure programs to local at /etc/password , NIS+, LDAP, etc and in what order to look in. I haven't messed with PAM for a long time, but if you search for "pam" and "sshd", you should find some information.

cool thanks, it wasn't PAM that saved me but I definitely needed to modify the sshd_config and ssh_config files to allow the program to access the sshd server, silly default settings were present. Still having troubles using public keys to logon but I'll work it out.