Comments on: SSH Weirdness On OS X http://splatdot.com/ssh-weirdness-os-x/ software. systems. solutions. Tue, 01 Feb 2011 18:00:27 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: james http://splatdot.com/ssh-weirdness-os-x/comment-page-1/#comment-653 james Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:47:50 +0000 I ran into this,but the cause was a bit different. Since this was the first hit for osx + the error message, I'll add my solution here. I use quite a few ssh keys. When ssh logs into a client, it iterates through all the available keys and attempts them. If this number exceeds that allowed by the ssh servers MaxAttempts setting the user never gets an opportunity to enter their pass and is instead presented with this error message. The solution is to create an ssh config entry that directs ssh to only use explicity set IdentityFiles, e.g. ~/.ssh/config Host SomeHostAlias Hostname ip.or.fqdn.com IdentitiesOnly yes You can set the option globally with: Host * IdentitiesOnly yes I ran into this,but the cause was a bit different. Since this was the first hit for osx + the error message, I’ll add my solution here.

I use quite a few ssh keys. When ssh logs into a client, it iterates through all the available keys and attempts them. If this number exceeds that allowed by the ssh servers MaxAttempts setting the user never gets an opportunity to enter their pass and is instead presented with this error message.

The solution is to create an ssh config entry that directs ssh to only use explicity set IdentityFiles, e.g.

~/.ssh/config

Host SomeHostAlias
Hostname ip.or.fqdn.com
IdentitiesOnly yes

You can set the option globally with:

Host *
IdentitiesOnly yes

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