User trap of the week: SSH-o-phone

Last week was full of user traps I want to document when I get time. This week's trap, though, is really easy to describe.

I have been trying to use ConnectBot to be able to SSH from my Android phone to my machines at home and work. However, even after regenerating and installing good-looking public keys, I kept not being able to authenticate. The only real clue was in /var/log/auth.log, which contained lines of the form:

    Jun 29 18:33:20 barton sshd[4401]: Invalid user  bart from 208.54.32.185  

You've probably spotted the problem right away. Took me a couple of half-hour sessions to figure it out. To be fair, there were lots of parts of potential fail-space to explore, so it took me a while to focus on this message. But still… (B)