Report this

What is the reason for this report?

Server Refused My Key :: Windows | Putty -> Digital Ocean

Posted on March 15, 2016

Okay, I am new to Digital Ocean and here’s what I have done so far. I have only 1 droplet in use now.

I created a droplet on Ubuntu 12.x. Initially I wasn’t able to set up SSH (although it was far more seamless to set up the same on AWS). Since I am connecting from a Windows System here is what i did: -

  1. I used PuttyGen to generate the Public Key and Private key. I copy pasted the public key from PuttyGen into the “Add SSH Keys” section in digital ocean and it was accepted.

  2. I then saved my private key locally and configured putty to accept this private key when attempting to connect at port 22.

  3. I tried to log on to digital ocean but it failed saying - “server refused key”.

  4. I then realized that I needed to go to /.ssh and update the authorized_keys file with the same public key that I had copied onto the site’s SSH.

  5. I did this by opening authorized_keys in vi editor and copied the public key signature.

  6. I then tried to connect again from putty using SSH. I still get the “server refused key” and instead have to connect using my password.

Am I missing something here?



This textbox defaults to using Markdown to format your answer.

You can type !ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!

These answers are provided by our Community. If you find them useful, show some love by clicking the heart. If you run into issues leave a comment, or add your own answer to help others.

I switched to a UNIX Client. Generation and transmission of keys between UNIX systems is seamless. Spent too much time on this Windows-UNIX nonsense and didn’t want to crack my skull anymore on it.

The developer cloud

Scale up as you grow — whether you're running one virtual machine or ten thousand.

Get started for free

Sign up and get $200 in credit for your first 60 days with DigitalOcean.*

*This promotional offer applies to new accounts only.