"offending key" warning when connecting by ssh to my VPS

Solution 1:

Most likely, you'll have reinstalled your VPS at some point and kept the host name and/or IP address. When reinstalling, the host key of the VPS got regenerated and since it differs from the one in your ~/.ssh/known_hosts, the warning gets displayed so you can detect the problem. This is done to prevent you from connecting to an entirely different system that replaces the legitimate host, e.g. to collect passwords.

If something like that happened, just remove the offending key from your known_hosts file and everything is fine, but if you are not aware of such an rinstall, you have to investigate further do understand why the key differs.

Solution 2:

I had same problem and it is very to resolve, please open your known_hosts file from vi .ssh/known_hosts and search for your server name. If you find host key is there without IP address then add your IP to that file and it will resolve your issue. Before:

myVPS ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEAsIfCSqA2rSlTvH8AMrMjpD66y5dOsYOPp30AXYGAEAFkVBs1+51lbRNyiFenpbxOyQjyvpgVJdkC4kqgG66xE6IPBrqpUFL3KjbUCTZ8sNHWn+I89bAMWDzGEiqaad/powDxgZgFe74bV82Se1igbFmHlHwwb7DEAcjXh34XbcMgJ0vIExJqPV1zccKkCXhstQy7av0+I7GRz5wIbYiIFMungKIhX3upwQOzyW/E1RDmq89BRv1g2ch1xsKK5OpNjCCFP2OSYPybJmFXhjOWI7LUdFASmaw5Z1az9LLpLKQePQ4mWsL/ON8Z9uvzhQig3hdQ/cnrAsRLShn4rJratw==

after adding IP:

myVPS,198.51.100.42 ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEAsIfCSqA2rSlTvH8AMrMjpD66y5dOsYOPp30AXYGAEAFkVBs1+51lbRNyiFenpbxOyQjyvpgVJdkC4kqgG66xE6IPBrqpUFL3KjbUCTZ8sNHWn+I89bAMWDzGEiqaad/powDxgZgFe74bV82Se1igbFmHlHwwb7DEAcjXh34XbcMgJ0vIExJqPV1zccKkCXhstQy7av0+I7GRz5wIbYiIFMungKIhX3upwQOzyW/E1RDmq89BRv1g2ch1xsKK5OpNjCCFP2OSYPybJmFXhjOWI7LUdFASmaw5Z1az9LLpLKQePQ4mWsL/ON8Z9uvzhQig3hdQ/cnrAsRLShn4rJratw==