I've a Mac mini running Big Sur Monterey to which I cannot connect via ssh unless the user has his session started.
I guess this is, like on ubuntu, due to the authorized_keys file not been accessible until the session is started, but I don't seem to be able to apply a similar approach, and it is becoming an issue.
The Mac is being used as a server, and if for some reason the session is closed or the machine has to be restarted, I'm forced to connect a monitor, mouse and keyboard to start the session. The problem here is that this has already happened while working remotely, so I completely lost the access to the machine.
Is there a way to fix this?
This is the ssh output when the local account is not logged in
myhost:~ myusername$ ssh -vvv remoteuser@remoteIP
OpenSSH_8.6p1, LibreSSL 3.3.6
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config
debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 21: include /etc/ssh/ssh_config.d/* matched no files
debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 54: Applying options for *
debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 58: Applying options for *
debug2: resolve_canonicalize: hostname remoteIP is address
debug3: expanded UserKnownHostsFile '~/.ssh/known_hosts' -> '/Users/myusername/.ssh/known_hosts'
debug3: expanded UserKnownHostsFile '~/.ssh/known_hosts2' -> '/Users/myusername/.ssh/known_hosts2'
debug1: Authenticator provider $SSH_SK_PROVIDER did not resolve; disabling
debug3: ssh_connect_direct: entering
debug1: Connecting to remoteIP [remoteIP] port 22.
debug3: set_sock_tos: set socket 3 IP_TOS 0x48
Stays there until the connection is drop by timeout. If I start the remoteuser session locally, then after the last line we can see above, it adds the following line, and the ssh process continues.
debug1: Connection established.
