force ssh client to use only password auth

ssh_password_auth.md

For people receiving the Permission denied (publickey) error despite the other solutions here, the problem is likely that the server is set not to accept passwords. To change this, you need to get into the server (many services will allow you to access with a password via a virtual console on their management console) and:

1. nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

2. Find PasswordAuthentication no and change it to yes, and uncomment it.

3. Run sudo service sshd restart (or sudo systemctl restart sshd if using systemd services)

4. Now try to log in, from a remote server, using one of the methods, such as ssh -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no [email protected] or ssh user:@host_ip colon after username.