SSH Error: Permission denied (publickey)

lolkthxbai

Raspberry Pi 4B (4GB)
Terminal (MacOS BigSur 11.1)

Any one have any ideas what may be the problem?

I cloned an image of my raspberry pi. When I try to connect to to cloned card on a different raspberry pi via SSH I get this warning

The authenticity of host 'retropie (##.##.###.###)' can't be established.
ECDSA key fingerprint is SHA256:****************/****************/****
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])? yes
Warning: Permanently added 'retropie,##.###.###.###' (ECDSA) to the list of known hosts.
pi@retropie: Permission denied (publickey).

If I use the IP address of the raspberry pi on my local network instead of the hostname, it works as expected:

ssh pi@192.168.1.124
pi@192.168.1.124's password: 
Linux retropie 5.4.83-v7l+ #1379 SMP Mon Dec 14 13:11:54 GMT 2020 armv7l

     .***.     Monday, 18 January 2021, 01:46:36 AM
     *****     Linux 5.4.83-v7l+ armv7l GNU/Linux
     `***'     
      |*|      Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
      |*|      /dev/root        59G   22G   35G  38% /
    ..|*|..    Uptime.............: 0 days, 00h04m20s
  .*** * ***.  Memory.............: 3544276kB (Free) / 3919796kB (Total)
  *******@@**  Running Processes..: 134
  `*****@@**'  IP Address.........: 192.168.1.124
   `*******'   Temperature........: CPU: 40°C/104°F GPU: 41°C/105°F
     `"""'     The RetroPie Project, https://retropie.org.uk

pi@retropie:~ $

mitu

Do you have any custom ssh configuration in $HOME/.ssh/config ?

BuZz

@lolkthxbai and also check /var/log/auth.log on the remote system (via terminal / keyboard of course if you can't connect)

Lolonois

Is this solved already?

If not: I would run ssh -v pi@<address>, it should give you a hint.
If you are still puzzled: Mount the SD card of the clone in your Mac, look for a file /etc/hostname. Edit the file and change the hostname to something different e.g rpi-clone. Boot your Rpi with this SD card and try SSH'ing again.

HTH