Using Public Key Authentication

Classic General
1

Does anyone have any instructions on configuring RapidWeaver to use SFTP with Public Key Authentication?

I have generated a Private and Public key pair on my hosting service and downloaded them to my local machine.

I’ve “told” RapidWeaver where the Private and Public key files are, but it fails when I select “Test Connection”

Is there a particular format or layout that the key files need to be in?

Thanks,
Steve

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2

@sgoldtho

Version of RW?

If using 6.3.x (maybe earlier versions of 6), in your publishing settings, you chose SFTP and then configured the certificate paths and the passphrase?

Did you try enabling or disabling 'Use Public Key Authentication?

Other than that I am outta ideas.

Brad

3

Steve,

As I’m sure you know, ssh keys are extremely ‘discerning’ about permissions - for obvious reasons.

Can you connect manually (from the Terminal using such syntax as ssh - l your name address and path)?

If so, try checking the permissions on both server and locally. It could be that RW needs to be in a Group (second parameter in most cases) which either it is not, or whose permissions are set to defeat such built-in connections from within the program.

4

Thanks Brad and Mark,

I had configured and used the keys in another application to test the connectivity with my hosting service before attempting to use them in RapidWeaver, so I new the issue was going to be with RapidWeaver.

I had just upgraded to RapidWeaver Version 6.3.7 before attempting to setup ssh keys.

I was expecting things to work as Brad had suggested (configure the public and private key path and provide the private key passphrase), but this did not work…

Unfortunately the solution was to completely remove RapidWeaver and re-install, then re-configure the public and private key settings under SFTP settings of Publishing Settings, all is well now…

If anyone is interested in creating and using SSH Key pairs they can be easily created using ssh-keygen.

Just open Terminal and issue the command: ssh-keygen

Follow the prompts for the default SHA256 2048 bit keys, or: ssh-keygen -b 4096 -C web-hosting

To change the default 2048 bits to 4096 and change the comment from the default username@machinename.local to “web-hosting”

Hope this helps,
Steve

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