Everything was ready out the box... I did have fun as my configuration in my client application was set to point to an IP rather than the hostname. Some related notes: * SFTP: https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-setup-sftp-server-on-ubuntu-20-04-focal-fossa-linux * https://www.howtogeek.com/50787/add-a-user-to-a-group-or-second-group-on-linux/ * https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-sftp-to-securely-transfer-files-with-a-remote-server * https://wordpress.org/support/topic/the-session-allows-sftp-connections-only/ Note, I'd added the user account to the group "sftp" which then made it specifically an ''sftp'' account and blocked it for ''ssh'' using the basic configuration. I got the error "the session allows sftp connections only" when trying to ''ssh''. Removing the account from the group fixed things. # Create sftp group and add user groupadd sftp usermod -a -G sftp david # Restart SSH - 2 methods systemctl restart ssh service ssh reload # Remove user from group gpasswd -d david sftp # View groups groups david ====== Disable Passwords ====== Make sure you have a key (or a host who can let you back in if you loose it) before doing this. Edit the file: sudo vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config Change this bit from "yes" to "no": # To disable tunneled clear text passwords, change to no here! PasswordAuthentication no #PermitEmptyPasswords no Restart SSH: sudo systemctl restart ssh