Thanks everyone, secure log tells me exactly what the problem is: "User username not allowed because account is locked" Setting a password for that account unlocks it and ssh works as expected. I guess I have to work on my account creation routine. Michael Am 10.10.2013 21:49, schrieb James Hogarth: > On 10 Oct 2013 14:45, "Michael Schultz" <m.schultz at srz.de> wrote: >> on a CentOS 6.4 machine I'm creating accounts with empty passwords. Each >> user's public key is located in <user's home>/.ssh/authorized_keys. >> >> When trying to ssh into that machine, following error message is > displayed: >> Permission denied (publickey). >> > > Check /var/log/secure on the server for more details... > > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos >