How to connect to SFTP with provided SSH Key

cyberducksftpsshssh-keys

I was redirected to this StackExchange, it is my first time here. The extent of experience I have with SSH keys begins and ends with the one time I setup the ability to push code to GitHub.

I need to access a FTP server via Cyberduck. I am in SFTP and need to "Choose…" a SSH Private Key. I have the TEXT for the private key that was messaged to me. So I can copy and paste it into a file? I'm not sure how to proceed and every resource I find is to generate a key rather than save a file to upload.

Guidance and resources are appreciated.

Best Answer

You can save the text that was sent to you as a file and use the built in "Choose..." feature on Cyberduck. I am on a Windows machine so I used the Notepad app. I assume TextEdit on a Mac would have similar results. Here are the steps:

Open Notepad
Paste the text that was provided for your SSH key
Save the file (I named mine key.txt)
Open Cyberduck
Select Open Connection
Select SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) for the connection type
Enter server, port (22), username
You can skip password - it will use the SSH key
For SSH Private Key, select Choose... and find the save location of your file
Click Connect
The Unknown Fingerprint prompt will appear, click Allow (and you can select Always if this is a connection you trust and will often use)
You should see your files and/or your assigned folder location!

Related Solutions

SSH Security – How to Store SSH Keys Securely

E.g. if I have multiple machines, I'd need to duplicate private keys, which I think is undesirable.

No, actually you don't. If you have multiple machines, you just create a separate private key on each one. For each private key, just upload the corresponding public key to GitHub using the same process.

Also, if my HDD go kaput, I'll lose my private key, which (I guess) is undesirable as well.

Not really; if you lose your private key, just generate a new one and upload the corresponding public key.

For what it's worth, you're right that duplicating a private key is highly undesirable. Ideally, a private key should be generated in one file (~/.ssh/id_rsa for example) and should never leave that file - that is, it should never be copied, moved, and especially not transferred over a network. (e.g. I exclude them from backups) Because of the nature of asymmetric authentication protocols, you only need to worry about keeping your private key out of the hands of others. If you go a bit overboard and you lose track of it yourself, it's generally not a big deal. (This is not to be confused with asymmetric encryption private keys, e.g. GPG keys, which you probably want to hold on to.)

Using SCP or SFTP with the ssh config file

From the help text: "... [-F ssh_config] ..."

According to the above, -F expects one argument: path to an OpenSSH configuration file, ~/.ssh/config or similar. But you are giving it a gzipped SQL dump instead.

Since plain ssh myalias is already working, you don't even need the -F option here. Just sftp myalias would connect to the server.
However, the OpenSSH sftp client does not support uploading files like you are trying to; it can only download files (using the syntax host:path) or work in interactive mode. For uploading, you need to use either the interactive mode...
```
$ sftp myalias
sftp> cd /tmp
sftp> put db.sql.gz
```
...or the scp tool:
```
scp db.sql.gz myalias:/tmp
```
or
```
scp db.sql.gz webost@staging2.example.com:/tmp
```

(sftp does have a batch mode in which it can read commands from a file, using -b, but it is simpler to use scp for single uploads.)

There are other SFTP clients as well – lftp is good for interactive use, while curl can be easier to automate. For backups and such, you could also use rsync (which runs its own protocol but still inside SSH).

Best Answer

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SSH Security – How to Store SSH Keys Securely

Using SCP or SFTP with the ssh config file

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