ssh remote host identification has changed

Question

I\'ve reinstalled my server and I am getting these messages:

[user@hostname ~]$ ssh root@pong
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@           


        

Answer 1

I had the same error in my machine, and I clear the known_hosts file, and after that, it works fine.

Answer 2

AWS EC2.

Find the ip in the message it gives you.

run

vim /home/ec2-user/.ssh/known_hosts

Use the arrow keys to find the ip from the message and click.

dd

This will delete that line then run escape

:wp

This will save then you are good to go.

Answer 3

As many have already said, use ssh-keygen, i.e.

ssh-keygen -R pong

Also, you may like to consider temporarily turning off host key checking:

ssh -oStrictHostKeyChecking=no root@pong

Answer 4

Remove that the entry from known_hosts using:

ssh-keygen -R *ip_address_or_hostname*

This will remove the problematic IP or hostname from known_hosts file and try to connect again.

From the man pages:

-R hostname
Removes all keys belonging to hostname from a known_hosts file. This option is useful to delete hashed hosts (see the -H option above).

Answer 5

Sometimes, if for any reason, you need to reinstall a server, when connecting by ssh we will find that you server say that the identification has changed. If we know that it is not an attack, but that we have reinstated the system, we can remove the old identification from the known_hosts using ssh-keygen:

ssh-keygen -R <host/ip:hostname>
root/.ssh/known_hosts updated.
Original contents retained as /root/.ssh/known_hosts.old

When connecting again we will ask you to validate the new fingerprint:

ssh -l user <host/ip:hostname>
The authenticity of host '<host/ip:hostname>' can't 
be established.
RSA key fingerprint is 3f:3d:a0:bb:59:24:35:6d:e5:a0:1a:3f:9c:86:81:90.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes

Answer 6

I had this same error occur after I recreated a Digital Ocean Ubuntu image. I used the following command with my server IP in place of [IP_ADDRESS]

ssh-keygen -R [IP_ADDRESS]