A bioinformatics master's student with Linux experience struggles to connect to an SSH server during a class exercise while all other students succeed. Despite trying various fixes — adjusting SSH config, testing deprecated cryptography, running MobaXterm via Wine, and switching machines — the real cause turns out to be mundane: his university email alias started with a number, which Ubuntu silently renamed to prepend 'user', causing a mismatch in credentials and a missing .ssh directory. A humbling reminder that smugness precedes debugging pain.
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