I can't/won't try to decipher the log messages, and the following is offered on the basis of your comment re the *password* in your question. Two possibilities for this occur to me: 1. If you're getting a password prompt, that ***may be*** because you *opted* to password-protect your key when you generated your keys with `ssh-keygen`. This is not the same as authenticating yourself to the server with a passphrase - the password created during `ssh-keygen` is to prevent someone else from using the key pair you generated. 2. Just to briefly review basic SSH functionality: * The system from which you initiate the SSH connection is the **client**. * The system to which the client connects is the **server**. * The public & private key generation is done on the **client** * The public key is transferred from the **client** to the **server** * There are many good tutorials available on this proedure. [This one from DO](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-configure-ssh-key-based-authentication-on-a-linux-server) seems like a good one to me.