Google server putty connect 'Disconnected: No supported authentication methods available (server sent: publickey)

Question

I'm trying to connect to my Debian Google Compute Engine server through PuTTy (I've tried other alternatives too) but when I do I get the error "Disconnected: No supported authentication methods available (server sent: publickey)

The google server came without a username and password, only a url to automatically login to their own terminal.

Answer 1

I had PuTTY working and then one day got this error.

Solution: I had revised the folder path name containing my certificates (private keys), and this caused Pageant to lose track of the certificates and so was empty.

Once I re-installed the certificate into Pageant then Putty started working again.

Answer 2

Turn on Password Authentication

By default, you need to use keys to ssh into your google compute engine machine, but you can turn on password authentication if you do not need that level of security.

Tip: Use the Open in browser window SSH option from your cloud console to gain access to the machine. Then switch to the root user with sudo su - root to make the configuration changes below.

1. Edit the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file.
2. Change PasswordAuthentication and ChallengeResponseAuthentication to yes.
3. Restart ssh /etc/init.d/ssh restart.