Be careful you don't inadvertently lock yourself out of your machine when upgrading
I had previously locked down my sshd by disallowing passwords (allowing keys only).
When I upgraded, the .ssh directory under root got wiped out, but my /etc/sshd_config options were still in place, which meant that I couldn't login, because there was now no public key for a root login and sshd wasn't accepting password-based logins.
It would have been simple to avoid this, if I had temporarily enabled passwords in sshd_config, before the upgrade.
As it was, the only thing I could do to recover was to open the case, connect the drive to my PC, and put a public key back in /root/.ssh. What a hassle.
While doing this, I bumbled and generated an RSA key (wasn't paying attention). I could not figure out why things still weren't working. (I had set sshd to work with DSA keys only).
Lessons:
- Careful when upgrading, particularly if you have tightened sshd security
- Pay attention to RSA/DSA distinction—it might matter depending on how you have sshd configured
- I now store both the /etc/sshd_config and the /root/.ssh in a TrueCrypt encrypted file on my thumbdrive. Having the second of these would have saved me some time. Having the first might have helped me think about the initial problem because I could have read my sshd options.
(applies to White Light Version—don't know how this applies on Blue Light Version)
