Hey all,

Weird question here, but I'm having some trouble with SFTP on a freshly build CentOS 6.5 system. This system will be replacing an old CentOS 5 system, which is fine in all other regards except SSH keys. I need to carry over some a RSA SSH key. This key was generated for 1 specific purpose, and has to remain the same. The key sits in the /home/user/.ssh2 folder, as putting it in the /home/user/.ssh folder caused issues with the existing dsa keys. This setup works fine on the CentOS 5 system.

So, when I run SFTP sftp -v -o IdentityFile=/home/user/.ssh2/id_rsa to see the output when logged into SSH, it works properly sends the proper public key:

debug1: Offering public key: /home/user/.ssh2/id_rsa

When I run the same exact command from the Gnome desktop, it uses the public key from the .ssh folder instead. And I have no idea why.

Is there something in the Gnome profile setup that I can change that may get this working properly? Any other reason why using the IdentityFile argument works properly through SSH, but not from the desktop?

Thanks!

Please define what you mean by run same exact command from the Gnome desktop.

When I run the sftp command from a terminal window from the Gnome GUI, it uses the wrong public key.

When I ssh to the system using putty from my Windows system and run the exact same command as the same user, it uses the proper public key.


So, when I use putty from my system and connect via SSH, I can run the following command successfully:

sftp -v -o IdentityFile=/home/user/.ssh2/id_rsa user@host

With -v specified, I can watch the debug info and see that it uses the proper keys:

debug1: identity file /home/user/.ssh2/id_rsa type 1
debug1: Offering public key: /home/user/.ssh2/id_rsa


But, if I open a terminal window through Gnome on the system itself and run the exact same command as above, it offers a different public key:

debug1: identity file /home/user/.ssh2/id_rsa type 1 (it looks correct at this point)
debug1: Offering public key: user@systemname

It doesn't specify the full path of the public key, but as the remote host is rejecting the connection, it appears to be using the wrong key, most likely from the /home/user/.ssh folder. I've tried specifying the identity file as above, as well as creating a config file that points to the proper ssh key, and they both do the same thing. I can't figure out why this works when I run it from putty, and then fails when I run it from the desktop on the system. It makes no sense. What else could I be missing?

Using -vvv will increase the amount of debug information which might answer the most likely question.