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I was connecting to one of my Linux servers from my MS Windows workstation using PuTTY (I generated them on MS Windows using one of the PuTTY related tools, I don't remember which parameters I have used while generating the keys). Now I'm trying to connect to the same server from my Ubuntu GNU/Linux workstation. I already have private / public key pairs in my ~/.ssh :

id_rsa
id_rsa.pub

Now in addition to those private / public key pairs that I already have, I also want to add the private / public key pairs for connecting to my Linux server. For PuTTY I had two files that let me successfully connect to my Linux server:

emrePrivate.ppk
emrePublic.pub

I have copied the above files to my ~/.ssh directory. Then I tried to connect to my server using the following command:

$ ssh -v -i /home/emre/.ssh/emrePrivate.ppk [email protected]

But I see that it tries to use wrong public key. Here's the output:

OpenSSH_5.3p1 Debian-3ubuntu4, OpenSSL 0.9.8k 25 Mar 2009
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config
debug1: Applying options for *
debug1: Connecting to yafz.org [109.74.204.147] port 22.
debug1: Connection established.
debug1: identity file /home/emre/.ssh/emrePrivate.ppk type -1
debug1: Remote protocol version 2.0, remote software version OpenSSH_5.1p1 Debian-6ubuntu2
debug1: match: OpenSSH_5.1p1 Debian-6ubuntu2 pat OpenSSH*
debug1: Enabling compatibility mode for protocol 2.0
debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_5.3p1 Debian-3ubuntu4
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT sent
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT received
debug1: kex: server->client aes128-ctr hmac-md5 none
debug1: kex: client->server aes128-ctr hmac-md5 none
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REQUEST(1024<1024<8192) sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_GROUP
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_INIT sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REPLY
debug1: Host 'yafz.org' is known and matches the RSA host key.
debug1: Found key in /home/emre/.ssh/known_hosts:3
debug1: ssh_rsa_verify: signature correct
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS received
debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_REQUEST sent
debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_ACCEPT received
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey
debug1: Next authentication method: publickey
debug1: Offering public key: [email protected]
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey
debug1: Offering public key: /home/emre/.ssh/id_rsa
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey
debug1: Trying private key: /home/emre/.ssh/emrePrivate.ppk
debug1: PEM_read_PrivateKey failed
debug1: read PEM private key done: type <unknown>
Enter passphrase for key '/home/emre/.ssh/emrePrivate.ppk': 
debug1: PEM_read_PrivateKey failed
debug1: read PEM private key done: type <unknown>
Enter passphrase for key '/home/emre/.ssh/emrePrivate.ppk': 

And as you can see it does not accept my passphrase. I have also tried to copy emrePrivate.ppk over to id_rsa and then emrePublic.pub to id_rsa.pub but I still could not connect to my Linux server.

I'm worried especially about these lines:

debug1: Offering public key: [email protected]
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey
debug1: Offering public key: /home/emre/.ssh/id_rsa

But I could not find how I can fix this.

Any ideas?

1 Answer 1

5

Your public key has to be in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the target box. If you want more than one key in this, just copy them over to the target box and append them like this:

cat id_rsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Also, read this info about putty key compability and how to convert keys.

2
  • I cannot connect to my Linux server right now because it does not accept connection from my Ubuntu Linux workstation (it accepts only public key authentication), thus I cannot modify ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the target box. I thought since I already have public and private keypairs I could use them on my Ubuntu workstation somehow to connect to the server. Is that impossible? Jul 24, 2010 at 9:35
  • I saw that I did not need to modify the authorized_keys on the server, simply using puttygen and converting my private key worked! Thank you very much :) Jul 24, 2010 at 9:37

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