Question Solution Linux SSH: Permission denied (publickey) after moving ~/.ssh (Fix Permissions & SELinux)

[Syns]

After copying my SSH keys to a new user, I get “Permission denied (publickey)”. What am I missing?

 

[CL4Y]

Fix ownership/permissions and contexts so sshd trusts your keys.

# as the target user
mkdir -p ~/.ssh && chmod 700 ~/.ssh
mv id_rsa id_rsa.pub authorized_keys ~/.ssh/
chmod 600 ~/.ssh/id_rsa ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
chown -R $USER:$USER ~/.ssh

if SELinux is enforcing (RHEL/CentOS/Fedora):

restorecon -Rv ~/.ssh

Check

ssh -v user@server

If still failing, ensure [/etc/ssh/sshd_config] has PubkeyAuthentication yes, then:

sudo systemctl reload sshd