I am attempting to setup an SSH pubkey login using a non-root user. I can login if I use a password, however, no go with a public key.

I turned "Strictmodes" to no in the sshd_config file and pubkey login works. However if I leave Strictmodes to yes, I can't log in with pubkey.

I think it is because the group owner is not the user

I am getting an error when I do

I tried googling but haven't found a solution. Coming here in a last ditch effort to figure this out. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your time.

read the links in my sig, they should help.

Unfortunately, those links don't really address my issue. Apparently it is a permissions problem and I need to change ownership of the .ssh and authorized_keys file to amrogers3: amrogers3.

When I run chown amrogers3:amrogers3 I get "invalid group: amrogers3:amrogers3"

I can't figure this out. I have reached the end of the internet tried to google this issue.

It looks like there's no amrogers3 group. Can you type "id" on the command line to see what your account's primary group ID is?

Two groups, share and www-data.

i have tried everything I can think of and I cannot login without turning "Strictmode" off in sshd_config.

what is the owner group of your /home directory. again my links talk about permissions.

you could always try running the following command:

that will set proper strict permissions on the .ssh directory.