Simple guide to setup keyed login for SFTP?

Question

I have complete FTP enterprise setup and running SFTP, but one client is asking for keyed login, not user/pass.  I want to test it before giving him instructions but this is out of my realm of expertise.

What I've done is in Complete FTP under User --> Public Keys --> Generate New Key Pair and Add to List

When prompted I've created a password for the private key and saved it on the FTP server system and then also copied it to my test client system.

On my test client system (FileZilla client) I've setup the user, entered the username and and selected the file that I generated in the previous step.  FileZilla said it was not compatible and asked if I wanted to convert it - Yes.  It then prompted for the password I had used and I entered that.  When I try to connect I get the following error:

ERROR    [Session.84:Default Site:username:xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] Failed to verify signature ConfigException: Unable to parse RSA key

Can anyone give me a simple step by step to get the keyed login working?

Comments

It sounds like you've done the correct steps, and the client is trying to use public key authentication.

First thing to do is to enable logging at the All level, and see if there are any further details in the log file.  What version of CompleteFTP are you using?

Answer 1

Here's the steps I ended up taking to get it to work.  Not sure if this is "correct" or not but maybe someone else can benefit from this answer:

1. Use PuttyGen to generate a keypair.  Save both public and private key files.
2. Copy the public key file to the CompleteFTP server
3. In CompleteFTP admin click on keys --> import public key and import the key file
4. Click Apply Changes in upper left
5. On client PC setup connection to use keyfile (I used FileZilla)
6. When prompted for the keyfile, browse to and select the private key file
7. Log in