Re: Granting access to OpenBSD

On Tue, Jan 20, 2026 at 11:10 AM Thomas Kupper <mailing.list@kupper.li> wrote:

On 20.01.2026 07:47, Washington Odhiambo wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 19, 2026 at 7:42 PM Martin Schröder <martin@oneiros.de
> <mailto:martin@oneiros.de>> wrote:
>
>     Am Mo., 19. Jan. 2026 um 17:08 Uhr schrieb Washington Odhiambo
>     <odhiambo@gmail.com <mailto:odhiambo@gmail.com>>:
>      > Thank you for the explanation. Very easy to understand.
>      > I did exactly what you advised. It still did not allow me SSH access.
>      > Now, I added pf=NO /etc/rc.conf.local and rebooted.
>      > I believe this disabled PF completely.
>      > This too did not solve the problem.
>      > I remember running OpenBSD7.4 under VMWare Workstation and life
>     wasn't this difficult.
>      > See as I even have FreeBSD 15-RELEASE as a Proxmox VM and
>     accessible, I am completely stumped with this issue around OpenBSD.
>      >
>      > TIt's affecting my sanity.
>      >
>      > Does anyone have any suggestions on how else I can resolve this?
>
>     Start by reading the PF users guide.
>     http://www.openbsd.org/faq/pf/index.html <http://www.openbsd.org/
>     faq/pf/index.html>
>
>     And trim down your pf.conf - start with a minimal config.
>
>
> The point is, I am not even interested in PF in the first place. I just
> need SSH access to work.
> The question is why it's not, even with PF disabled, yet sshd is running.
> See https://imgur.com/a/1OnKWNQ <https://imgur.com/a/1OnKWNQ>

With pf disabled: What user are you trying to connect and are you using
a ssh key or password? Have you created an additional user when you
installed OpenBSD?

Yes.

 

When you installed OpenBSD, at one point the question is:

-> Allow root ssh logging (yes, no, prohibit-password) [no]

I chose YES.

 

If you left it at 'no' you won't be able to login as root user. If you
selected 'prohibit-password', you won't be able to login with a
password, only with a key.

Check /etc/ssh/sshd_config for "PermitRootLogin", or use the additional
user you created.

The issue is NOT about login failure. It's about port 22 appearing not to be open to accept connections.

That's why I was focusing on PF.

Otherwise, I have almost 30 years running Unix/Linux so addressing login failure would be the easiest thing to do.

--

Best regards,
Odhiambo WASHINGTON,
Nairobi,KE
+254 7 3200 0004/+254 7 2274 3223

 In an Internet failure case, the #1 suspect is a constant: DNS.
"Oh, the cruft.", egrep -v '^$|^.*#' ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :-)

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