Overcome SSH ‘Permission denied’ for long IBM i user profiles
[UPDATED May 2023]
In IBM i releases before 7.4, IBM i’s Secure Shell (SSH) rejected connection attempts with user profile names longer than eight (8) characters. The error message can vary, but may be similar to “Permission denied, please try again” or “Failed to connect sshd.”
For those older releases (7.3 and earlier), you can allow user profiles longer than 8 characters by editing the file:
/QOpenSys/QIBM/UserData/SC1/OpenSSH/etc/sshd_config
and adding a new line containing the string:
ibmpaseforienv PASE_USRGRP_LIMITED=N
To apply your changes, end and then start the SSH server, like so:
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ENDTCPSVR SERVER(*SSHD) STRTCPSVR SERVER(*SSHD) |
An alternative is to set the variable system-wide, to allow other PASE processes to use the improvement:
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ADDENVVAR ENVVAR(PASE_USRGRP_LIMITED) VALUE('N') LEVEL(*SYS) |
For more details about configuring SSH, see How to Configure and Use SSH on IBM i.