SSH doesn't ask for password, gives "permission denied" immediately

Solution 1:

The server has setting

 PasswordAuthentication no 

Change it to yes and after a restart you'll be able to use password authentication.

Solution 2:

Check your login sequence with ssh -vv. This will tell you what authentication methods are tried and which fail. You can then enable what you want and disable what you don't want. Enable first, of course.

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Solution 3:

You will also need to edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config to have the setting:

ChallengeResponseAuthentication yes

as well as...

PasswordAuthentication yes

And remember to run /user/sbin/service ssh restart afterwards to pick up the new settings.

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Solution 4:

its in your sshd file (not ssh, which you'll also probably find in /etc/ssh)

I believe you want to make sure PasswordAuthentication yes is set and uncommented.