Not long ago, I was trying to login to a new server and I was continually met with the error: ``` ssh X.X.X.X Received disconnect from X.X.X.X: 2: Too many authentication failures for [username] ``` After ensuring that I wasn't the issue and that the server wasn't to blame, I asked my friend Google what could be happening. This is what was happening. When you give the command `ssh x.x.x.x`, SSH tries to authenticate with that server using each one of your private keys before even presenting you with the option for interactive password authentication. This is the default behaviour - and I'm OK with that now that I know, but it is a bit quirky. For this particular server, I did not have a key - I needed to use a password to authenticate. To stop the SSH client from attempting key based authentication, you can do one of two things: 1. Pass a flag at connection time - `-o PubkeyAuthentication=no`. 2. In your SSH config add the `PreferredAuthentications password` option for that host. Also - if you ever run into issues with SSH, run it with -v (or -vv) and see what SSH is really doing behind the scenes.