Connect to Host with VSCode using the private key

Question

I want to connect to a remote server, I know the username and hostname, and I also have the private_key.pem file. How can I connect to this virtual machine using VSCode?

I get this error with the solutions on the internet, and that's reasonable because I have not imported this private_key.pem file anywhere, and I do not know how.

Permission denied (publickey)

Thanks for your help.

I use windows, but the remote machine is ubuntu.

score 35 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 01 '23 at 20:50

35

You can add the private key by following the below steps:

Open VSCode
Press F1 and search for "Remote-SSH: Open Configuration File"
Select the config file to edit and add the new server and private key
```
Host *name-of-ssh-host-here*
User *your-user-name-on-host*
HostName *host-fqdn-or-ip-goes-here*
IdentityFile *C:\\path\\to\\my\\id_rsa*
```
For the IdentityFile specify the path of your private key. For Windows make sure to use double slashes.

Reference

edited Apr 01 '23 at 20:50

Josh Correia

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3
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answered Oct 19 '21 at 07:04

Jaymit Gupta

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1

Specifically, I had a *relative* path to my identity file, not an absolute path like is specified here. This solved my problem. – James Jul 12 '22 at 23:39
where does this `id_rsa` file come from ? – D.L May 30 '23 at 12:37
@D.L generate ssh keys for your system. ssh-keygen is used to generate the keys for the system – Jaymit Gupta May 31 '23 at 05:18
@JaymitGupta. But how is this related to the original `private_key.pem` file ? – D.L May 31 '23 at 08:58
@D.L If you have pre-existing (assuming you have already generated it) , you can use that also. – Jaymit Gupta Jun 01 '23 at 10:30
@it turns out that the path to a google drive `g:\\ ... *.pem` does not work, but a local path `c:\\ ... *.pem` does work – D.L Jun 01 '23 at 13:35
at first this failed. I had added the key using `ssh-add` before attempting this approach. after removing that key with `ssh-add -d` this worked. – carl verbiest Aug 26 '23 at 14:21

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 08 '23 at 08:37

Some other things to check:

On File explorer, for both:

~/.ssh directory
~/.ssh/id_rsa

remove permissions for everyone except yourself with:

Properties
Security
Edit

And also ensure that ~/.ssh/config contains:

Host myhostname
  HostName myhostname
  User myusername

Tested on Windows 10, vscode 1.78.

Connect to Host with VSCode using the private key

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