So I have this Linux project a PC/104 board, booting off a CF card, CF is mounted read-only, a VERY stripped down system. I need to run a ssh daemon on this system, and was recommended to use dropbear. I have the file, all compiled and such, and everything runs happy and good when I boot this embedded thing off the hard-drive (I can boot off a harddrive for development reasons, the final product only has a CF card). However booting off the CF card dropbear gives no errors when starting but when I connect from another computer it always says my password is wrong. If I tell dropbear to give errors to stderr then I get a message: "Login attempt for nonexistent user". So something is majorly failing here that it's not even saying the password attempt was bad but the actual user is known. So, can someone, anyone please tell me how dropbear is sposeto work. Currently I have a dropbear executable (tried statically linked, I think what I have now is dynamically linked, libraries are there, etc) a /etc/dropbear/dropbear-rsa-keyfile and a similar dss keyfile in that same directory. Is that all that needs to be done? What about for any specific users, should there be a .ssh directory under any user's home directories? (I can make those read-write if necessary) I have not been able to find a good description on how it should work, what files are *mandatory* and where the lookup is done, etc.
Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.
TIA, Mark Brodis