Windows 10 OpenSSH key invalid format

Question

The recent beta version of OpenSSH on Windows 10 does not accept my openssh formatted private key:

The same key works on ssh shipped with git shell from github.

Is there a format option for openssh on Windows that I'm missing or is this a bug?

Same problem for me. Not only working with `git shell` but also when running `ssh` from WSL. — Uri, Dec 25 '17 at 08:20
@Uri then probably it's an invalid format you are using! Git shell ssh works with valid formats — AK_, Dec 25 '17 at 08:24
I know this is a really old post, but please [edit] to convert your images of text into actual text. [See here](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/285557/11107541) for why. — starball, Nov 16 '22 at 17:45
It's so annoying when overreaching moderators close relevant questions... If OpenSSH and git shell aren't "tools primarily used by programmers", then I don't know what is. Anyways, I had the same problem and found the culprit to be the be line endings. Windows style CRLF didn't work, but it was all good after converting to LF. I guess others searching for this answer will never find it though... — Erling T, Aug 16 '23 at 10:29

score 72 · Answer 1 · edited Nov 16 '22 at 17:50

72

I got this working.. believe it or not by adding a single LF at the end of your private key file. E.G

-----BEGIN OPENSSH PRIVATE KEY-----
KEY
-----END OPENSSH PRIVATE KEY-----

Without the LF the private key worked fine with putty, secureCRT, WinSCP, GIT etc... but Windows (which is used by VisualCode) Kept giving me "invalid Format"

edited Nov 16 '22 at 17:50

General Grievance

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answered Jul 30 '21 at 15:45

Grev

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After I added the line the SSH client could connect, but my GIT client still refused the key, then I had to change the new lines (answer from @raza) – Anton Krug Dec 09 '22 at 12:48
Can confirm this was my problem using VSCode. Wild stuff – BTables May 31 '23 at 19:29
In my case, I had to also add the lines for "BEGIN" and "END". – Haytham Anmar Jun 11 '23 at 16:04
This worked for me, thanks ! – Viki Jul 15 '23 at 06:36

simon · Answer 2 · 2018-01-02T16:21:42.930

19

Windows 10 currently (as of January 2018) only supports ed25519 keys (reference: https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/issues/973). I see that you are trying to connect to Amazon Web Services. If you manage your key using the AWS console, you can only use an RSA key.

However, if you are trying to connect to an existing EC2 instance, you can do the following:

Create the private/public key in Windows cmd using the command "ssh-keygen", if you have not already done this. The key pair is saved in files id_ed25519.pub and id_ed25519 in your .ssh directory
Connect to your AWS EC2 instance. Add the contents of the id_ed25519.pub to your authorized_keys file within the .ssh directory
Now you can connect to your EC2 instance using the Windows 10 SSH client.

edited Jan 02 '18 at 16:21

answered Jan 02 '18 at 15:34

simon

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Maybe you can add a way to convert keys to this standard? – AK_ Jan 02 '18 at 15:36
For this to work both the server and the client have to support the same signature protocol, which is not the case. – simon Jan 02 '18 at 15:48

score 8 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 21 '21 at 01:11

I had a similar issue. I copied it id_rsa from Linux to Windows 10. I knew that it was probably line-terminating issue. So I downloaded dos2unix for Windows https://waterlan.home.xs4all.nl/dos2unix.html, and ran dos2unix id_rsa, and it worked afterwards.

score 5 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 26 '22 at 03:06

5

For me, a new line at the end of the file solved the problem.

answered Aug 26 '22 at 03:06

Fenghe Xu

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score 2 · Answer 5 · answered May 18 '19 at 14:09

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try this

ssh-keygen -o -a 100 -t ed25519 -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa -C "your email"

and catch the folder with this command

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

hope this help.

answered May 18 '19 at 14:09

dhedheerik88

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Windows 10 OpenSSH key invalid format

5 Answers5