Server password always required?

[Sanford Selznick]

> On Jul 31, 2024, at 4:43 PM, Matt Johnston <matt at ucc.asn.au> wrote:
> 
> Hi Sanford,
> 
> On 2024-08-01 2:42 am, Sanford Selznick wrote:
>> Hi dropbear folks,
>>  On the linux client for spaceflight we're running dropbear: v 2017.75.
>>  On our Windows 11 server we're running: Open SSH Server v 9.5.0.0 on
>> the bench.
>> 1. We've generated keys with `dropbearkey` on an ubuntu 16 VM and
>> moved them to  both machines above.
>> 2. We can't run dropbearconvert on the linux client so we ran it on
>> Ubunto to convert our private key.  We moved the result back to Linux.
>>  When we use this key we get the error back "String too long".
> 
> That error would most likely occur of the identityfile is the wrong format
> or is corrupt somehow (the first 4 bytes are the length). Is it using
> the converted (OpenSSH format) private key (the output from dropbearconvert)?
> The output from dropbearkey should be usable as-is on dbclient, without conversion.
> 
> If you don't have any success, generate a new test key and send it, I'll have a look.


Thank you for your quick response!

This was a great sanity check.  

The solution: on the Windows side the authorized_keys file was interrupted by another one in a different location.  Adding our public key to that file fixed the issue entirely.

Thank you again,
  Sanford