Not able to create an ssh key in my ~/.ssh folder [SOLVED]

webbja123 · 2021-04-13 13:51:59

I am trying to create an ssh key and save it to the /.ssh directory in my home directory. I create the key with the following commands;

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "comment here"

After I accept the defauly keyname and path and then enter a passphrase I get the following message.

Saving key "/home/username/.ssh/id_ed25519" failed: Operation not permitted

This implied that my username does not have permission to save items to this directory, so I tried to change permissions with the following command

sudo chmod u+rwx ~/.ssh

and get the following error

chmod: changing permissions of '/home/username/.ssh': not permitted

As a side note if it type su and run as the root user I can generate a key in the /root/.ssh directory, but it will not let me save the key to the /home/username/.ssh directory, which means that I would need to run as root every time I want to ssh into this specific server, which is not a good idea. How can I change permissions of the /home/username/.ssh directory to allow me to generate a key in that directory?

Last edited by webbja123 (2021-04-13 18:05:12)

frostschutz · 2021-04-13 14:04:48

What are the permissions? ( ls -ld ~/.ssh )

If in doubt, rename the directory and have ssh-keygen re-create it on its own accord. Then see if there's anything that needs to be transferred over from the old dir (other keys, known hosts, etc.)

webbja123 · 2021-04-13 14:20:36

The permissions are as follows;

ls -ld ~/.ssh
drwx------ 2 username users 4096 Apr 6 20:52 /home/username/.ssh

seth · 2021-04-13 14:21:54

Also "stat ~" and "mount | grep home", the chmod error usually means that it can't traverse or write the parenting directory (~) but that should not affect xkcd:149, so maybe the /home partition is mounted read-only?

webbja123 · 2021-04-13 14:52:50

@seth the results are shown below

stat ~/.ssh
File: /home/username/.ssh
Size: 4096 Blocks: 8 IO Block: 4096 directory
Device: fe02h/65026d Inode: 6423038 Links: 2
Access: (0700/drwx------) Uid: ( 1000/ jonwebb) Gid: ( 984/ users)
Access: 2021-04-12 18:14:36.277159575 -0600
Modify: 2021-04-06 20:52:26.746033722 -0600
Change: 2021-04-07 08:42:36.273285966 -0600
Birth: 2021-04-06 19:08:21.682736151 -0600

mount | grep home
/dev/mapper/volgroup0-lv_home on /home type ext4 (rw,relatime)

seth · 2021-04-13 14:59:12

Can you briefly elaborate on the entire "username"/"jonwebb"/"webbja123" situation?

id

webbja123 · 2021-04-13 15:05:53

@seth forgive me, I am not sure what you are asking? I tried to obfuscate my actual computer username jonwebb with the word username, but missed the name in a few places. Where do you see webbja123 other than on the username for this web page?

seth · 2021-04-13 15:12:48

Nowhere, but we need to figure what your UID/username is (basically unobfuscate stuff…)

lsattr -dl ~ ~/.ssh
touch ~/.foobar ~/.ssh/foobar

qinohe · 2021-04-13 15:20:09

webbja123 wrote:

I tried to obfuscate my actual computer username jonwebb with the word username, but missed the name in a few places.

You should never do these kind of changes by hand, the risk is too high you post 'secret' info.
In this case it's not that big a problem!, but, better use a tool like sed to do the job for you, in this case a simple command would do the job:

sed -i 's/jonwebb/myweb/g' document

substitute jonwebb for myweb global and insert in document - (see) man sed

webbja123 · 2021-04-13 15:22:56

The ls command yields the following

lsattr -dl ~/.ssh
/home/jonwebb Extents
/home/jonwebb/.ssh Immutable, Extents

while in the .ssh directory I ran the second command with the following results

touch ~/foobar ~/.ssh/foobar
touch: setting times of '/home/jonwebb/.ssh/foobar': No such file or directory

seth · 2021-04-13 15:24:24

/home/jonwebb/.ssh Immutable, Extents

man chattr

You should figure how that ended being there.

webbja123 · 2021-04-13 18:04:58

Well now I feel stupid. I forgot that when I set up openSSH I set an immutable bit on the .ssh directory and the authorized_keys file to prevent anyone from ssh ing in and making changes. I turned turned the bit and then made it immutable again, but now it works. Thank you.

Arch Linux

#1 2021-04-13 13:51:59

Not able to create an ssh key in my ~/.ssh folder [SOLVED]

#2 2021-04-13 14:04:48

Re: Not able to create an ssh key in my ~/.ssh folder [SOLVED]

#3 2021-04-13 14:20:36

Re: Not able to create an ssh key in my ~/.ssh folder [SOLVED]

#4 2021-04-13 14:21:54

Re: Not able to create an ssh key in my ~/.ssh folder [SOLVED]

#5 2021-04-13 14:52:50

Re: Not able to create an ssh key in my ~/.ssh folder [SOLVED]

#6 2021-04-13 14:59:12

Re: Not able to create an ssh key in my ~/.ssh folder [SOLVED]

#7 2021-04-13 15:05:53

Re: Not able to create an ssh key in my ~/.ssh folder [SOLVED]

#8 2021-04-13 15:12:48

Re: Not able to create an ssh key in my ~/.ssh folder [SOLVED]

#9 2021-04-13 15:20:09

Re: Not able to create an ssh key in my ~/.ssh folder [SOLVED]

#10 2021-04-13 15:22:56

Re: Not able to create an ssh key in my ~/.ssh folder [SOLVED]

#11 2021-04-13 15:24:24

Re: Not able to create an ssh key in my ~/.ssh folder [SOLVED]

#12 2021-04-13 18:04:58

Re: Not able to create an ssh key in my ~/.ssh folder [SOLVED]

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