Server refused public-key signature despite accepting key

Posted on July 21, 2022

I use filezilla (tried a few different clients) to FTP into my digitalocean droplet with a public key. I have been doing this with success for years.

Seemingly overnight (although there was a FileZilla product update in there), this connection stopped working. I now get an error in FileZilla:

Status:	Server refused public-key signature despite accepting key!

I’m not really sure what this means. I’m able to SSH into the server directly using a tool like git bash. In /var/log/auth, there’s not really anything of any use either.

Unsure where to even start, google hasn’t been super helpful.

The droplet is running ubuntu 20.04

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.

digitaloceanuser1001

July 24, 2022

Accepted Answer

I resolved this by completely deleting the site connection from FileZila and re-adding it with the exact same info.

Bobby Iliev

July 23, 2022

Hello,

It looks like that FileZilla no longer has your SSH private key. You can follow the steps here on how to set that up so that you could be able to again SFTP using FileZilla:

https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/droplets/how-to/transfer-files/

Basically, in the Connection section, click SFTP. This is where you add your Droplet’s private SSH key. Click Add key file…, then locate your Droplet’s private SSH key on your local machine. If FileZilla prompts you to convert the file into a supported format, click Yes.

Hope that this helps!

Best,

Bobby