I'm trying to change the password I use to login via SSH but it doesn't seem to be working. When I type the new password to login via Putty, it's wrong.. When I type the OLD password, it's correct. Have I forgotten something?

Thanks

UPDATE: OOPS! Now I really screwed up. Now SSH it's just plain refusing connections. Help!

Can you get in through the Ajax console, or Lish?
These are on the Linode Manager web page.

Another way in, also using the Linode Manager, is to shut the machine down, make a Recovery configuration which uses the Recovery (Finnix) kernel, and boot into that. You'll need to use Ajax or Lish again to get in. Once in, mount your virtual drives (or at least the one with /etc on it). You can then either use chroot and passwd (this is probably safest, but maybe more complicated), or change the password files directly (/etc/passwd and /etc/shadow).

You should find specific instructions through google.

How are you trying to change your password normally? Are you using the passwd command?

Sorry to be of trouble.

What I did was generate new keys for my SSH but included passwords for them.. When I tried to restart ssh again, of course, it couldn't use them because they were password protected. Removing the passwords seemed to solve the problem.

It's no trouble - I was bored.

I use Pageant for handling keys with passwords in Windows. It works well. I don't think you need to have anything in the Putty configuration for the connection - it seems to automatically look for pageant, then get the decrypted key from there.

I think I've had trouble before trying to use keys that were made on a Windows machine, using Putty, on a Linux machine, or vice versa.

And a good tip is to always have a spare ssh window open and running, while you're messing about with ssh stuff. You can even restart sshd on the server and it won't affect active connections. Don't close the spare until you can open a new connection!

And you don't need to restart the server when you add (or remove) keys.

Just put the public key in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

That's a really good idea Thanks