Rubin Shrestha
Zend certified PHP/Magento developer
Rubin Shrestha
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“Can’t find password for connection ID” using SSH key pair to access sFTP

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I’m trying to access company’s sFTP using ForkLift 3 on MacOS. I created an openSSH key pair using Terminal and the following command:

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa

Inside Terminal I opted to include a passphrase with the key pair. I saved the key pair to the default place (Users/user/.ssh/). I then sent the id_rsa.pub key to the Cloud Team who put it onto the server I’m trying to access.

My colleagues followed the same procedure and have had no problems accessing sFTP. Difference being they’re on Windows, using WinSCP and a PuTTY (.ppk) key set generated by PuTTYgen. I’m using MacOS, ForkLift 3, and a key pair generated inside Terminal that is not .ppk format, though the Cloud Team said this is not an issue at all.

Having received confirmation that my public key (id_rsa.pub) file is indeed on the server I’m trying to access, I’m now using ForkLift 3 to try and connect, with the correct server name, user, private key file (id_rsa) and passphrase, but I receive this error each time:

2021-11-05 09:00:53.528 AskPassTool[67797:1017626] Can’t find password
for connection ID: 23645924-DE18-467A-BAEF-5BDB33936DD3

2021-11-05 09:00:53.641 AskPassTool[67798:1017634] Can’t find password
for connection ID: 23645924-DE18-467A-BAEF-5BDB33936DD3

2021-11-05 09:00:53.750 AskPassTool[67799:1017640] Can’t find password
for connection ID: 23645924-DE18-467A-BAEF-5BDB33936DD3

2021-11-05 09:00:56.024 AskPassTool[67802:1017664] Can’t find password
for connection ID: 23645924-DE18-467A-BAEF-5BDB33936DD3

svc_arnc@sftp2.proscloud.com: Permission denied (publickey,gssapi-keyex,gssapi-with->mic,password,keyboard-interactive).

I can’t for the life of me figure out what is wrong and why it won’t connect. I’m using the same credentials as my colleagues who are able to login without fail, though I’m using a different key pair (we are all sharing a username to access the server) and passphrase attached to the key pair.

How may I go about troubleshooting this? I’m not command line savvy but have scoured StackOverflow articles and tried the following to no avail:

  1. Viewed /etc/ssh/ssh_config file to ensure PasswordAuthentication is set to “yes” (it is)
  2. Checked permissions for my public key (id_rsa.pub), private key (id_rsa), and known_hosts file inside /.ssh/
  3. Erased the known_hosts file

As I’m the only person at my company using MacOS, I’ve been unable to glean help internally on how to connect to sFTP using different software (Windows WinSCP vs. MacOS ForkLift 3) and style key pair (.ppk vs. openSSH).

Can someone please help and give me a sanity check?! I’m going crazy!

Thanks in advance for helping me learn.

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