I’m venturing further down the Virtualmin rabbit hole
After seeing some less than glowing reviews of Contabo VPSs recently, I’ve opted to get a dedicated server from Hetzner. I have managed to transfer VS between Contabo VPSs with no problem (great!), but when I have just tried in on this new Hetzner server I get an error.
Failed to transfer server : Failed to contact Virtualmin on destination system : user@mydomain.co.uk’s password: Permission denied, please try again. user@mydomain.co.uk’s password: Permission denied, please try again. user@mydomain.co.uk’s password: user@mydomain.co.uk: Permission denied (publickey,gssapi-keyex,gssapi-with-mic,password).
Where should I start looking? I’m using the root user/password for both servers and these work OK.
To expand on this (although it probably doesn’t really relate to the original error above). I have been able to successfully migrate a cPanel backup onto the new Hetzner dedicated server, and in turn transfer that VS to one of the Contabo VPSs.
If I then try and transfer it to the dedicated server I get this slightly different error (I can’t say for sure if I also got this error the first time I attempted it from the other VPS to the dedicated server - its worded a little different).
Failed to transfer server : Failed to contact Virtualmin on destination system : The authenticity of host ‘mydomain.co.uk (1.23.45.67)’ can’t be established. ED25519 key fingerprint is SHA256:/mwVCTqjBUz8SrbfT1Q+a9D3OU6fYVIQiAc5RGCp29c. This key is not known by any other names Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])? yes Warning: Permanently added ‘mydomain.co.uk’ (ED25519) to the list of known hosts. root@mydomain.co.uk’s password: Permission denied, please try again. root@mydomain.co.uk’s password: Permission denied, please try again. root@mydomain.co.uk’s password: root@mydomain.co.uk: Permission denied (publickey,gssapi-keyex,gssapi-with-mic,password).
The “Permission denied” message indicates that the password you entered for the root user is incorrect, or the server is configured not to allow password-based authentication for the root user, which is a pretty common default configuration nowadays.
Therefore, you should use either public key authentication or allow password authentication for root user (not recommended) with the PermitRootLogin yes option in your SSH config. It can also be changed using the Webmin / Servers ⇾ SSH Server: Authentication page.
I’ve compared the /etc/ssh/sshd_config on both the VPS and the dedicated server, and they are identical (including the “PermitRootLogin yes” option in them both, which I have seen can be an issue.
Another entry talked about is “PasswordAuthentication no” which is not present on either the VPSs or the dedicated server, and as it is working to the VPSs, I don’t think this is required.
