Paramiko: “not a valid RSA private key file”

Question

I am trying connect to server using following spinet

ssh = paramiko.SSHClient()
ssh.set_missing_host_key_policy(paramiko.AutoAddPolicy())

ip = [\'x.x.x.x\']         


        

Answer 1

Recent versions of OpenSSH (7.8 and newer) generate keys in new OpenSSH format by default, which start with:

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

That format is fully supported by the Paramiko only since version 2.7.1 (2019-12-09).

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If you are stuck with an older version of Paramiko, you can use ssh-keygen to convert the key to the classic OpenSSH format:

ssh-keygen -p -f file -m pem -P passphrase -N passphrase

(if the key is not encrypted with a passphrase, use "" instead of passphrase)

For Windows users: Note that ssh-keygen.exe is now built-in in Windows 10. And can be downloaded from Microsoft Win32-OpenSSH project for older versions of Windows.

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On Windows, you can also use PuTTYgen (from PuTTY package):

• Start PuTTYgen
• Load the key
• Go to Conversions > Export OpenSSH key.
  For RSA keys, it will use the classic format.

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If you are creating a new key with ssh-keygen, just add -m PEM to generate the new key in the classic format:

ssh-keygen -m PEM