Did something that was overdue a long time ago…
Hardened my Arch Client.
Firewall was already set up and i installed Fail2Ban.
Configured that and also changed the SSH Port plus I set the verification to key only.
But I just wasn’t able to access the machine, even within itself via SSH.
After maybe an hour or two of troubleshooting I found out what was the cause.
Since all my Repos are in one folder (with sub folders for the the repos of course) and my ssh config file was in one of those (private Repo), SSH didn’t accept the authorized_keys file as it was just a symlink in the correct .ssh folder.
Took me way too long to realize that while keys and my config file worked fine that way, the authorized_keys file didn’t.
So I deleted the symlink and moved everything except the config file to the original folder.
Symlinked the config file and voila, it worked!
#hardening #sysadmin #stupid #ssh #linux #arch #archlinux #lessonlearned
