On 10/22/2010 07:29 PM, Tim Dunphy wrote: > the only thing left I can think of is that bluethundr is an LDAP user. > can THAT prevent the user from logging in with keys? No. LDAP users work fine. Have you tried looking at /var/log/secure? Typically the cause for failed authentication is logged there, including bad permissions. I didn't mention it the first time because it seemed ridiculous, but your home directory may be at fault, too. Your home directory, .ssh, and .ssh/authorized_keys must all restrict group and others from writing. That is, none of those three can have permissions greater than 0755.