ssh doesn't seem to be finding local private key

Question

I created the keys with ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048 and also tried ssh-keygen without arguments (which should be the same).
The private key is in .ssh/id_rsa
Its permissions are 600
The .ssh directory permissions are 700
It is not using a passphrase
using -i <key file> has no effect.
The remote server log makes no mention of a failing key. It just looks like a normal password login. This is why I think it must be local ssh not finding the key.

I'm at a loss. I can ssh in using keys from another box (a Windows box, using PuTTY), so I know it is working on the server. My local Linux is Mint, which is an Ubuntu derivative, but I doubt that has anything to do with anything.

I tried running ssh-agent, but that both did nothing (after telling me it was adding my identity), and also seems to only be for passworded key files, which mine isn't.

Here are the results of the ssh command ssh -l remoteusername -p 85 domain.com -vvv: https://pastebin.com/n2ef8qGv

That output is from a time when I didn't use -i. But the file I'm specifying is .ssh/id_rsa anyway, which is the same.

Solved. The problem was in the format of my authorized_keys file on the server. I had concatenated the two keys together because my searches said that was all the format was. But they need to be separated by a newline.

Because /var/log/auth.log said nothing about it, I assumed the problem couldn't be the server. Guess I was wrong about that. I know the last time I had ssh problems the log showed it. In fact just now I broke it on purpose and tried to log in, and the log has nothing about a failed key login. I got the message "server refused our key" locally, which is good, but there is nothing on the server in /var/log/auth.log or with journalctl _COMM=sshd.

Which user is the owner of the key file? Include ls -l key_file in the edit of your question. Try to change ownership of the key file with sudo chown user_name:user_name key_file. — kukulo, Mar 14 '18 at 17:51
I don't think there is a "local" (i.e. client-side) log file by default - however you can output increasingly detailed connection logging information by invoking ssh with the -v or -vv or -vvv options — steeldriver, Mar 14 '18 at 17:53
@NerdOfCode no, it is a different user name than the user name on the remote machine. — felwithe, Mar 14 '18 at 18:03
@kukulo yes I am the owner of both the directory and the file. — felwithe, Mar 14 '18 at 18:04
Please run ssh -vv user@host. This will produce a lot of debugging output. [Edit] your question and include this information. — vidarlo, Mar 14 '18 at 19:04
Did you transfer the public key to the target user's .ssh/authorized_keys? — muclux, Mar 14 '18 at 19:17
Could that be a duplicate of https://askubuntu.com/questions/394305/public-key-authentication-failed ? — Sebastian Stark, Mar 14 '18 at 20:00

ssh doesn't seem to be finding local private key

0 Answers0