SFTP connection error with public/private keys (between EC2 and mac)

[paulie]

I've successfully connected to a number of servers using SFTP in BC4 on my macbookpro. I'm trying to get a new server to connect but it won't.

These things work:
1) On command line "ssh myserver" (I have a section of the .ssh/config file with the credentials and the private key)

2) In FileZilla, I added my private key (after converting it to a ppk format) and successfully created a profile.

3) In BC4, I have configured a different server the same way and it works for that server. I compared the profiles and I don't see any difference.

The only difference I can see between the servers is that one is CentOS 5 and the other is a newly created server on EC2 and is CentOS 7.

The error I'm receiving when trying to connect is:
Public key authorization failed.
Public key agent authorization failed.
No more authentication methods available.
Connection failed: Connection list (error code is 10058)

Thanks for any clues about why BC4 would act differently from FileZilla and what I should try next.

(I saw a similar thread from a couple of years ago, but it appeared like that was on a PC, since it recommended installing Pageant. I'm not sure how I would do that on a Mac or if that's relevant.)

[Aaron]

Hello,

Are you using the latest BC4 (4.0.3) release for testing? We have also sometimes seen odd issues with specifically generated key pairs. If you generate a new pair for testing, does the new pair allow the connection?

Also, when making any changes to the specific SFTP Profile or the <Default> Profile in the Profiles dialog, please then restart the application. This is not always necessary, but is a useful troubleshooting step to be certain the new changes are applied on connection.

[paulie]

Yes, the first troubleshooting I did was download the latest version (build #19420) .

I did try quitting BC and starting it up again. No luck.

And I did generate a new pair -- I received one from Amazon when I created the server, then I generated one on my Mac when that didn't work. I wondered if the key was a different type or something.

[Chris]

Paulie,

Thank you for reporting the issue, I've repeated the problem.

I verified connecting to an SFTP server using a private key fails if the server is running CentOS 6.6, and it works with a server running CentOS 5.11. This was true for both BC 3.3.13 and BC 4.0.3.

OpenSSH has had quite a few security patches recently, so it's possible one of the recent patches in newer versions of OpenSSH introduced a compatibility issue.

I've added this to our bug list and we'll work on fixing this for an upcoming release.

[paulie]

I just tried this again with Build #19477 and it connected!

Thanks so much for the great support and the even greater product!

[Aaron]

Hello,

We have a couple of fixes in the latest 4.0.4 release, but if other users are still having trouble, we have a few more coming in the next 4.0.5.

[Chris]

For anyone else having trouble with SFTP private key authentication, I've added an article that describes the process to our website:
http://www.scootersoftware.com/suppo...ftp_privatekey

The steps in the above article worked in testing with BC 4.0.4 Pro for Windows as a client using a private key without a passphrase and RHEL/CentOS 5.11, 6.6, and 7.0 on the server end.