Fix ssh ‘Too many authentication failures’

If you’re like me, you might have a lot of ssh keys installed and this might prevent you from logging into servers with the following message as a result:

“Too many authentication failures”.

As far as I understood this happens due to SSH trying each key on the client for logging and failing due to hitting the serverMaxAuthTries in the SSH server configuration. I use the following quick fix to work around this, by forcing SSH to use a password instead of a public key:

ssh -o PubkeyAuthentication=no username@hostname.com

I’m pretty sure there has to be a better, more durable solution for this issue, but the above fix allows you to at least gain access to your server again. Btw I use this on Linux (Ubuntu 10.04) with OpenSSH_5.3p1 Debian-3ubuntu4.

Quick howto using Virtualbox with webdevelopment

I use Virtualbox (version 1.5.6_OSE) on Ubuntu Hardy with Windows XP as one of the (guest) virtual machines. In order to access my webserver installed on the host (real physical system (Ubuntu Hardy) I need to use the ip-address 10.0.2.2 (I use NAT in Virtualbox’s network settings) from Windows XP (or any other guest operating system) and edit the hosts (c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts) file with the Virtual Host names I use on the host. This allows me to access the Virtual Host based websites to be accessed from the Windows XP operating system.

An example hosts file on Windows XP:

# make sure there's at least one space between the ip-address and the virtual host name
127.0.0.1 localhost
10.0.2.2 SOME_VIRTUAL_HOST_NAME


Replace SOME_VIRTUAL_HOST_NAME with a real Virtual Host name. In my case I use the extension .dev to indicate a local project in development, so it could be something like burobjorn.dev

Glitch art

I don’t know why, but these pieces somehow captivate and intrigue me. I get a ‘Gotham City‘ feeling from it due to the stark contrast and the slightly angled ‘buildings’.

Found via milov.nl

Ps: interesting starting point about Glitch Art