Under review

"Unable to extract public key" when using an SSH key with a passphrase

2 years ago in iPad • updated by 2 years ago • 5

When trying to use an ed25519 SSH key with a passphrase, I get the following error:

```

ERROR: Public key authentication failed: Unable to extract public key from private key fil
e: Wrong passphrase or invalid/unrecognized private key file format

```

I found https://feedback.textasticapp.com/communities/1/topics/2571-error-reading-ssh-private-key, but a key with the newer format but without a passphrase worked fine.

Any suggestions?

Vote

Replies 5
Oldest first
- Newest first
- Oldest first

Under review

2 years ago

Did you enter the passphrase in the password field?

2 years ago

Yes, I did!

Aside, it would be good if the password wasn't specified if it was asked for interactively, matching the openssh CLI client.

2 years ago

Can you please send me an example private and public key file including a passphrase so I can try to reproduce the problem here?

You can send it to support@textasticapp.com

Or tell me how exactly you created the private key file.

2 years ago

I was able to figure out how to reproduce. I'm using 1Password for my SSH keys. If I export a key with a passphrase, and use that directly, I get the above error. However, if I reencrypt the same key by running `ssh-keygen -p -f id_textastic` using the same passphrase, it works! So there's something about the format of the private key from 1Password that's breaking things.

I created a brand new key for testing. Here it is as generated from 1Password, with passphrase `textastic`:

```

```

Public key:

```

ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIBVwMVbyFoRVzprJHiAdBrO+iR23mMtXATk8J7e0Ylq5

```

And then the same private key above, but after passing it through ssh-keygen first:

```

```

2 years ago

Thanks a lot. It's great that you could figure it out. I'll try to find out what's going on with the key exported by 1Password.

Customer support service by UserEcho