Error: "permission denied"

There are many possible causes for “permission denied” errors, which have to be eliminated one by one. These are covered in the sections below. If at the end, the error still persists, you will need to start a support ticket. If possible, you should first collect verbose output from your ssh client if possible (use the -v option for OpenSSH) and include that in the support ticket. See the Start Here page for where to send your support ticket.

Check that Your Username Is Correct

It is critical that your client pass the right username. This can be specified in your .ssh/config file for clients that support it like OpenSSH (see the Configuring SSH page for more information). Other clients, like PuTTY, need it specified in their own configuration formats/dialogs. Or you can specify it manually to some clients, like most command line clients (includes OpenSSH) when specifying the host. The common format is USERNAME@HOST.

The question then is, what is the correct username to use. That depends on how your user account works. The subsections below handle each case

Member of a Project from the Project Portal

Projects in the new Project Portal give a project-specific username to each member. You must use the project-specific username for the particular project you are working on, which was sent to you by an email notification when you were added to the project and can also be gotten by using the Project Portal. These usernames have the form uXXXXX where each X is a digit. They use the same SSH key as your Academic Cloud/ID account (see the Uploading SSH Keys).

Legacy NHR/HLRN Users (before Project Portal)

Legacy usernames (that you received when you applied for your NHR/HLRN account before mid-2024) are no longer supported starting 2026. You will need to migrate to the Project Portal. See NHR/HLRN Project Migration for more information.

If your project already has been migrated to the Project Portal, you received a new username of the form u12345, please use that instead.

SCC Users before Project Portal

Legacy usernames are no longer supported starting 2026. You will need to migrate to the Project Portal. See Applying for Projects on the SCC for getting a project.

Check that SSH is Using the Right SSH Key

First, check that the SSH key you are giving to your SSH client is the same one you uploaded for your account. The public key should match what you uploaded. See Upload SSH Key for more information. In particular, if you used a document editor for copying your SSH key before pasting it in, you might have to re-upload it but use a plain text editor to do the copying (document editors add formatting characters sometimes).

Make sure the right key is referenced in your .ssh/config file if your client uses it (OpenSSH and many others, but not PuTTY). See Configuring SSH for more information. You can also tell the OpenSSH client which key to use on the command line with the -i KEY argument where KEY is the path to your key.

The legacy SCC login nodes are not directly accessible from the internet. They require an IP address from GÖNET, using VPN or using a jumphost. Try to login to one of the regular login nodes, reachable via glogin.hpc.gwdg.de (they also serve as the jumphost you should use). If you can login to them, but logging into legacy SCC login nodes fails, make sure you are using glogin.hpc.gwdg.de as the jumphost and not login.gwdg.de.

See Configuring SSH and Logging In for more information on the jumphost configuration.