CentOS - Nov 2021 - sshd gives false "Too many authentication failures"

On Sat, 2021-11-20 at 15:33 +0530, Thomas Stephen Lee
wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 20, 2021 at 2:32 PM Andreas Fournier
> <andreas.fournier at runbox.com> wrote:
> > 
> > I just came across something strange with my fully updated Centos7
> > server. When I try to ssh into it the same way I've always done I
> > get
> > "Too many authentication failures". This just came out of
the blue.
> > I'm
> > using the root account and a password. But in my sshd_config it
> > still
> > reads
> > #MaxAuthTries 6
> > Which I think is the default.
> > 
> > From the console I can log in fine and when I look in the logs for
> > sshd
> > I can just see the the attempts I just made, that are less than six
> > and
> > no previous denied attemps.
> > 
> > Any clues what's going on?
> > 
> 
> I got the same error once.
> In my case the problem was ssh tried to log in with ssh keys before
> giving a password prompt.
Thanks, same for me. I had added a new key for a different server to
the ssh client machine that got it over the limit.

/Andreas

On Sat, 2021-11-20 at 11:46 +0100, Andreas Fournier
wrote:
> On Sat, 2021-11-20 at 15:33 +0530, Thomas Stephen Lee wrote:
> > On Sat, Nov 20, 2021 at 2:32 PM Andreas Fournier
> > <andreas.fournier at runbox.com> wrote:
> > > 
> > > I just came across something strange with my fully updated
> > > Centos7
> > > server. When I try to ssh into it the same way I've always
done I
> > > get
> > > "Too many authentication failures". This just came out
of the
> > > blue.
> > > I'm
> > > using the root account and a password. But in my sshd_config it
> > > still
> > > reads
> > > #MaxAuthTries 6
> > > Which I think is the default.
> > > 
> > > From the console I can log in fine and when I look in the logs
> > > for
> > > sshd
> > > I can just see the the attempts I just made, that are less than
> > > six
> > > and
> > > no previous denied attemps.
> > > 
> > > Any clues what's going on?
> > > 
> > 
> > I got the same error once.
> > In my case the problem was ssh tried to log in with ssh keys before
> > giving a password prompt.
> 
> Thanks, same for me. I had added a new key for a different server to
> the ssh client machine that got it over the limit.
This got me wondering what is the best practice for a situation where
you have a machine with more than five keys on file in able to ssh to
different servers. But you would also like to ssh with password to an
other set of servers.

/Andreas