Use keys with SSH

Question

<^>Used Putty.gen to create Putty private and public keys. On client system \karpov in \Users\xyz.ssh I have “id_rsa”, “id_rsa.ppk”, “id_rsa.pub”, “known_hosts”.

“id_rsa” contents from private Putty file and “id_rsa.pub” from public Putty file.

When I try to run ssh clientusername@clientsystem @server name, I get "load pubkey “C:\Users\Harmonia12/.ssh/id_rsa” : invalid format thespar@karpov @archon’s password. When I try to type a password, the keyboard is not active–I can’t type into the PowerShell window.

What file has “invalid format”? What is the valid format?

alexdo · Answer

Heya, @johannaharmonia You can try to generate a new ssh-key pair and upload it to your droplet. https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/droplets/how-to/add-ssh-keys/to-existing-droplet/ Also keep in mind that ssh-clients will not display the password characters during the password prompt, but the characters itself are accepted, so after you’re done typing you can hit enter. Hope that this helps!

KFSys · Answer

Heya, The error message you’re seeing is due to the use of the PuTTY-generated private key format which is not directly compatible with OpenSSH’s ssh client. The OpenSSH client expects the private key to be in the OpenSSH format, not in PuTTY’s PPK format. I’ll recommend you to generate a new key directly from the Droplet and add the Private part to filezilla and leave the public to your Droplet. You can check this article here: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-ssh-keys-on-ubuntu-22-04 Additionally, here is how you can access your Droplet without putty until you generate the keys: https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/droplets/how-to/connect-with-console/

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Use keys with SSH

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