Tell HN: Ubuntu 24.04 force enables password auth, need to disable differently

19 points

2 years ago

Just installed Ubuntu 24.04 from the server image (https://ubuntu.com/download/server) and was just bitten by this.

Disabling password auth in `/etc/ssh/sshd_config` does nothing.

    # To disable tunneled clear text passwords, change to no here!
    PasswordAuthentication no
    ^ This is a lie, setting it to "no" does nothing

You also need to delete /etc/ssh/sshd_config.d/50-cloud-init.conf which contains a single line:

    PasswordAuthentication yes

Other people complaining about the same thing:

[0] https://www.mikeberggren.com/deb-ssh-auth

[1] https://askubuntu.com/questions/1516262/why-is-50-cloud-init-conf-created

[2] https://askubuntu.com/a/435620

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