SFTP and PPK key

[VilenaP]

Hello All,

I'm trying to test SFTP to a vendor that supplied a public/private key in a PPK format (generated by Putty as far as I can tell). I've been unsuccessful so far in connecting. I was able to ssh to get the public key added to the known_hosts file but haven't been able to establish any other connection. The vendor only supports WinSCP so other than telling me I attempted to connect via password authentication they haven't been very helpful. I definitely setup my system to use public key authentication only. The only thing I have been able to find online indicates that the format of the key is likely the issue. Has anyone had any experience with a PPK file on the i? Does the key need to be converted to another format (PEM maybe?) Any advice, directions, thoughts and links are appreciated.

Thanks,
Vilena

[Scott Klement]

Assuming you a referring to SFTP from the OpenSSH suite, it uses PEM rather than PPK.

You should be able to convert the PPK file to the PEM style key either with OpenSSH command-line tools or with PuTTY. Google how to convert it, you shouldn't have any trouble finding tutorials, as this is a very common task.