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How do I enable or disable PasswordAuthentication in SSH?

John Reyes
  • Updated

Question

How do I enable or disable PasswordAuthentication in SSH?

 

Answer

The PasswordAuthentication option determines your ability to authenticate with a password via SSH. Password authentication is enabled in SSH by default.

For servers running AlmaLinux/CloudLinux 8
  1. Access your server using SSH as the root user.
  2. Open the file /etc/ssh/sshd_config using your preferred command-line editor.

  3. Search for a line starting with the following:

    CONFIG_TEXT: PasswordAuthentication

  4. To disable password authentication in SSH, set this option to "no":

    CONFIG_TEXT: PasswordAuthentication no

    To enable password authentication, set this option to "yes":

    CONFIG_TEXT: PasswordAuthentication yes

  5. Save the file and restart SSHd to apply the changes:

    # /scripts/restartsrv_sshd

For servers running AlmaLinux/CloudLinux 9+
  1. Access your server using SSH as the root user.
  2. Open the file /etc/ssh/sshd_config.d/000-cpanel-options.conf using your preferred command-line editor.

  3. Search for a line starting with the following:

    CONFIG_TEXT: PasswordAuthentication

    If one does not already exist, add one of the next lines to the end of the file.

  4. To disable password authentication in SSH, set this option to "no":

    CONFIG_TEXT: PasswordAuthentication no

    To enable password authentication, set this option to "yes":

    CONFIG_TEXT: PasswordAuthentication yes

  5. Save the file and restart SSHd to apply the changes:

    # /scripts/restartsrv_sshd

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