Mailing List Archive: Logging in from SSH2 PuTTY

Dear Conserver Users,

I am using Conserver 7.2.7 to monitor the consoles of 60 Unix servers and am
very pleased with it's performance and features.

I am hardening the Conserver Unix host and requiring SSH2 logins. Most
administrators are using PuTTY, a freeware terminal emulator with SSH2
built-in.

When a user logs in with password authentication and puts in their password
after the "console xxxxx" command, all works well.

When a user attempts to use public key encryption, connects, and types in
their passphrase, they get a "Sorry." message.

I am trying to automate the logon process by having PuTTY called with
arguments from a web page. Depending on which link they click for the
particular host they want to console to, PuTTY is called and the "console
xxxxx" command is entered automatically by PuTTY. Problem is, the "Sorry."
message comes back.

Bryan, I know that with my version of Conserver on HP/UX 11.0 that system
passwords are limitted to 8 characters in order to work with Conserver. Do
you have any ideas?

Thanks for a such a useful application!

Greg Brown
Computer Sciences Corporation
San Diego Data Center

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On Thu, Sep 04, 2003 at 03:19:23PM -0700, Greg Brown wrote:
> When a user logs in with password authentication and puts in their
> password after the "console xxxxx" command, all works well.
>
> When a user attempts to use public key encryption, connects, and types in
> their passphrase, they get a "Sorry." message.

weird...but, i can probably explain why the "Sorry." occurs.

> I am trying to automate the logon process by having PuTTY called with
> arguments from a web page. Depending on which link they click for the
> particular host they want to console to, PuTTY is called and the "console
> xxxxx" command is entered automatically by PuTTY. Problem is, the "Sorry."
> message comes back.

i've taken a quick look at the openssh interface and it seems to only
automatically allocate a pseudo-tty when you do a full login - if you
just run a command, there is no tty. conserver needs to be able to open
/dev/tty to read that password, so it needs to talk to a pseudo-tty.
there's a -t flag in openssh that forces sshd to allocate a tty even
though it's a remote command - when i used that, it "fixed" the problem
and i always go the prompt for the password. i took a quick look at the
putty docs and it too seems to have a -t option (or maybe it was the
plink tool). anyway, there could be a weird bug in putty where it's
allocating a pseudo-tty when using password authentication and not when
using keys, which would explain the difference in behavior. but, if you
can get the -t option in there, you should be ok.

> Bryan, I know that with my version of Conserver on HP/UX 11.0 that system
> passwords are limitted to 8 characters in order to work with Conserver. Do

if you're running 7.2.7, you shouldn't be limited to 8 characters (just
so everyone knows that). the fix you helped me with is in that version.

sorry for taking so long to answer...i was offline for the last few
weeks.

Bryan