I want to thank everyone for contributing to solving the implementation problem I was having.  It seems in the end it was an “operator” problem.  To summarize the results:

- regarding sshd port change – uncomment port, and change the port number entry in /etc/ssh/sshd_config. Restart the sshd service.  Update /etc/sysconfig/iptables to reflect the port number change from 22 to the port number specified in / etc/ssh/sshd_config, then restart iptables service.

- PasswordAuthentication no – this requires an additional option to be change, “ChallengeResponseAuthentication no”.  Having made both of these changes, causes the login to abort is a valid ssh key is not specified.

Again many thanks to everyone.

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From: Karl Kobata [mailto:Karl.Kobata@syncira.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 22, 2009 11:02 AM
To: 'centos@centos.org'
Subject: sshd options - centos 5.3

I have installed cento 5.3.  I enabled the ssh deamon.  I have found that 2 options that I normally use does respond as I expect.  Has anyone else had similar problems with the following options in sshd_config:

- Port 6666 – if I set the port to anything other than 22 (default), using ssh –p6666 name@servername, does not work.  Yet if I leave keep the default, then ssh name@servername allows me to login.

- PasswordAuthentication no – if I set this option to “no” (default is “yes”), and my ssh key is either missing or in error, I will be prompted for user system login password.  If this is set to “no”, it should not allow me to login if I have not ssh key specified or in error.  Has anyone else run into this problem.

Is there a workaround?  What are my options?  Please help.