Ssh – Unable to create a proper PEM for Redis Desktop Manager

redisssh-tunnelingUbuntu

On Ubuntu, I have a problem to establish a connection to redis server using SSH tunnel and SSH key with Redis Desktop Manager (RDM).

What are the symptoms?

I can connect to the server where redis is running using "plain" ssh and my id_rsa,
other utilities which use either the SSH agent or keys in .ssh can connect to this server and create tunnels (e.g. DB apps),
I can connect with RDM to redis servers using SSH tunnel and password (so the question is not a duplicate of Unable to establish an SSH tunnel using Redis Desktop Manager); but this is not a perfect solutions, because I would rather use private/public keys authorization,
I cannot convert keys in .ssh to a working PEM format required by RDM: any PEM files I've generated using different methods I googled are rejected by RDM with a message Connection: Disconnect on error: SSH Connection error(Authentication Error): Unable to extract public key from private key file: Unable to open private key file,
I tried entering either a path to id_rsa (~/.ssh/id_rsa) or just a path to a directory where my private key is stored (~/.ssh).

So, does anyone have an idea how to properly convert my SSH keys to a PEM format RDM needs and accepts?

Best Answer

That's a known issue of RDM: https://github.com/uglide/RedisDesktopManager/issues/4230

Workaround: copy your id_rsa file into a directory without "." in its name...

Related Solutions

Ssh – Why SSH login works in shell but fails in all third parties via ssh tunnel

You said, in the comments,

After restarting my computer, when trying to login via ssh again, I was asked the password to unlock the id_dsa file

There's at least part of the answer. Your other tools have no ability to unlock a private key, and no ability to talk to ssh-agent to have it authenticate on their behalf. You need to remove the password from the private certificate.

The syntax is:

ssh-keygen -p [-P old_passphrase] [-N new_passphrase] [-f keyfile]

And as you pointed out in your comment, the practical application of this is:

ssh-keygen -p -f ~/.ssh/id_dsa

The next part of the problem is that some third-party libraries for Java and .NET will only handle RSA ssh keys - and (in my experience) only up to a certainly key length. DSA and ECDSA are not options.

If you don't have ~/.ssh/id_rsa then you are going to need to create it, and copy the public part to the remote host:

ssh-keygen -t rsa
ssh remoteuser@remotehost 'cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys' < ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Another part of the problem may be that the private key is in the "wrong" format and needs conversion. From a brief perusal of the documentation for Redis Desktop Manager I don't believe this is the case but it would be worth double-checking. UPDATE: It appears that JSCH - Invalid private key confirms that the key is expected to be in OpenSSH format - which is what it appears you are already using.

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