cat /etc/debian_version
Now that Debian has released `etch' I decided to upgrade both my
servers to the newest versions. I have my main server where all my
movies, music and email live, and a file server where all my
backups go. I decided to start with the file server just to see if
there were any major problems. Everything went smoothly except
after the upgrade I could no longer ssh into the machine.
Since I use ssh keys to access the file server, when debconf asked
me this question I figured there was no harm in answering `yes'
Password authentication appears to be disabled in your
current OpenSSH server configuration. In order to prevent users
from logging in using passwords (perhaps using only public key
authentication instead) with recent versions of OpenSSH, you must
disable challenge-response authentication, or else ensure that your
PAM configuration does not allow Unix password file authentication.
If you disable challenge-response authentication, then users will
not be able to log in using passwords. If you leave it enabled (the
default answer), then the 'PasswordAuthentication no' option will
have no useful effect unless you also adjust your PAM configuration
in /etc/pam.d/ssh. Disable challenge-response authentication?
<Yes> <No>
After the upgrade I could no longer ssh into the machine except as
root and spent the next hour or so trying to figure out why. I
learnt quite a lot about ssh in the meantime but as it turned out,
the problem was that the upgrade had left me with /usr/bin/zsh as a
broken symlink, and consequently, every time I tried to ssh in, I
was authenticated and then promptly kicked off the system because I
didn't have a valid login shell. Once this was fixed, I was back in
business.
The upgrade on my main server went much more smoothly, with only
this little `lpd'
bug
causing a little hiccup. It is a bug with the printing daemon, but
seeing as my printer isn't hooked up yet, I will ignore it for
now.
I must confess, Debian releasing another version has hardly had
much impact on my day to day operations and perhaps that's a
testament to how good of a distro Debian really is. I went from
having a rock solid server platform, to having a rock solid server
platform with newer software with just one dist-upgrade
command.
Many thanks to the DD's.