confusing error message when connection via ssh fails, because host key verification failed

[Keywan Najafi Tonekaboni]

If I connect to a server via "ssh://hostname" the connection fails, when the key changed. But the error message isn't "Host key verification failed" or something simmiliar, it's:

Nautilus cannot display "ssh://hostname".
Please select another viewer and try again.

This is totally confusing, because you try solutions which won't fit the problem (changed or wrong host key).

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks for your bug. As pointed by Simon, http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=322501 is an upstream bug about that

[Julien Rottenberg (jrottenberg)]

Same message if the user hasn't launch ssh-add before launching Nautilus.

Nautilus cannot display "ssh://hostname".
Please select another viewer and try again.

[Sebastien Wains (sebastienw-deactivatedaccount)]

You also come across that error message when you have several SSH servers on different ports behind one IP.

The only way I found to temporarily handle that problem is to empty /home/user/.ssh/known_hosts and chmod 000 it.

This way, you always get prompted by nautilus as if it was the first time you were connecting.

Not the safest workaround.. subject to man in the middle attacks if you're accepting SSHv1 and allow password authentication.

[Simon Wenner (nowic)]

This bug still occurs on hardy with nautilus 2.22.3-0ubuntu2. It shows me a message, when the SSH key changed, telling me that the host timed out.

[Ofir Klinger (klinger-ofir)]

It seems that nobody working on it.

If someone has this problem, please go to the gnome bug system and submit the output of 'gnomevfs-info user:password@host'.

Gnome bug page: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=322501

[pablomme (pablomme)]

As of lucid alpha 3 at least, the message displayed is

 "Could not display "sftp://user@host/path/to/folder".
 Error: Host key verification failed
 Please select another viewer and try again."

Should we consider this bug fixed?

[Evan Carroll (evancarroll)]

While certainly a major improvement, it still lacks the information that a console host-key violation would prompt such as, what is a host-key violation, what a violation means, and options. Obviously someone has seen this bug report and tried to fix it, and at least this clues experienced SSH users as to the error. I suppose a gui-improvement would entail education and options: "Click here to remove the old entry from your known_hosts", "click here to cancel". And, maybe an output from the ssh-key visualization thing.

Either, way I'm good.

[pablomme (pablomme)]

@EvanCaroll: that's precisely what I was trying to report when I came across this bug. However, this bug is specifically about the message being uninformative, with the reporter even suggesting the current wording that nautilus/gvfs uses. I found bug #418192 which refers exactly to the issue at hand, and I'm in the process of upstreaming it -- there are similar-sounding bugs in Gnome's bugzilla, but not entirely the same, so I'll try opening a new one.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Upstream is wondering if the bug is still an issue with nautilus 2.30 and latest gvfs there. thanks.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to New. Thanks again!.

[Gary Helbig (ghelbig)]

Bug still exists in 9.10 Karmic

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Gary Karmic is no longer maintained please use a newest release like Natty and open a new bug if you're still facing the issue, thanks.

[derek (denc716)]

confirm in Ubuntu-15.10 this bug still exists. in gnome3 nautilus how to invalidate the ssh host cache?

I can remove ~/.ssh/known_hosts (or by ssh-keygen -R ... that particular host) that resolved ssh command line login only; but in the file manager (nautilus) it prompts this error message, and I don't know where nautilus save the ssh host key cache? and how to invalidate

Oops! Something went wrong.
Unhandled error message: Host key verification failed