I have been trying to get public key authentication working between an Ubuntu 7.10 openssh client and a winxp home sp2 openssh server for days now. Password authentication works well between the linux client and win server. Key authentication works between two linux boxes. I have followed about every link on the net that explains how to get the windows server to accept the key, all to no avail. Has anyone had any success with this scenario? Any help would be greatly appreciated. If I can't get it to work, I'll have to use password authentication which I would rather not do.

CygwinOpenSSH VNC Tunnel...This doc may give you some pointers.

Another how-to: Installing OpenSSH for Windows 2003 Server - How to get it working

ssh has one critical flaw: by default it will try less and less discriminating login-authentication mechanisms until it manages to secure a login. In other words, if public-key authentication fails it will degrade downward to a password-prompt unless you turn off that possibility. ("Only tryin' to please, ma'am... only tryin' to please.")

ssh does put diagnostic information into its logfiles, but this "try to please everybody everytime" behavior tends to make you forget to look there . . .

Thanks for the input, internetSurfer. I stumbled across that link while googling the problem. I was only gonna try that as a last resort as it pertains to w2k3 server, not wxp home. Have you tried this technique on winxp home?

Your advice is appreciated, sundialsvcs. I have experienced that exact behavior where ssh authentication 'falls through' to password authentication if it is not turned off in the sshd_config file. Disabling password authentication however does not make public key authentication work. I get the "Permission denied (publickey,keyboard-interactive)." message when disabling password authentication. Being fairly new to linux administration, I am not very well versed in deciphering verbose output from the shell command nor the log files applicable to ssh. I could, however post the output here if someone could help me interpret either the ssh verbose output or log file or both. I have learned that openssh file permissions can be a sticking point and since winxp makes it so difficult to change them (via safe mode only), then maybe I'll experiment on winxp pro. Thanks again, everyone, for the help and suggestions.

Thanks for the link to the doc, dxqcanada. I'll have a look. Just from the title it seems it may be of some help, as VNC over SSH is what I have been testing. I have got the tunneling part to work, which is great. I just hope the public key authentication can be made to work between linux and winxp home.