ssh public key authentication

I’m stumped. I’ve had previous experience setting up RSA/DSA public key authentication on a Linux machine running an old version of Red Hat, and I’ve also set up public key authentication on my home macs running both Panther and Tiger (client versions) and I’ve had no problems, even connecting using windows clients like putty.exe.

For whatever reason, I cannot seem to get public key authentication working on an installation of Panther Server I have setup on a Dual G4 at my office. Password authentication works fine, it’s not an issue on the clients I’m using, as they all do public key authentication on other servers I have setup just fine. It’s not an open ports issue, either, as I’ve mentioned password authentication works fine. I’ve modified the /etc/sshd_config file in the same way that I’ve modified the file on my Panther client, yet it refuses to do public key authentication.

Is there a special format that the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file must be in that is non standard? Can anyone offer any advice for what I’m doing wrong? Thanks in advance!