ganymed SSH2 Java

Question

I am using ganymed SSH2 java library to connect to a server using public key authentication. I have created the public/private key pair and uploaded the public key (mykey.pub) to my server in the /.ssh2 directory. I have the private key on my machine locally.

Info on keys: 2048-bit dsa key pair (ssh2)

I am doing something like this:

File keyfile = new File("C:\\keys\\mykey");                  
String keyfilePass = "a"; // will be ignored if not needed

        try
        {

            Connection conn = new Connection(hostname);
            conn.connect();


            boolean isAuthenticated = conn.authenticateWithPublicKey("myusername", keyfile, keyfilePass); 
           //I get an error at this line

The error I am getting is:

Caused by: java.io.IOException: Invalid PEM structure, '-----BEGIN...' missing
    at ch.ethz.ssh2.crypto.PEMDecoder.parsePEM(PEMDecoder.java:138)

Can anyone help? Is there any other library that works better than this?

EDIT: Key FILE

---- BEGIN SSH2 ENCRYPTED PRIVATE KEY ----
Subject: username    Comment: "2048-bit dsa, username@host, Tue Jul 31 2012 13:12:48 -\
0500"
KEY   
---- END SSH2 ENCRYPTED PRIVATE KEY ----

SOLUTION:

I figured the problem out, the key had to be converted to OPENSSH format (I used puttygen for that). This java library only accepts private keys in openssh format.

Answer 1

The header "BEGIN SSH2 ENCRYPTED PRIVATE KEY" means that your private key has been generated by the proprietary ssh system from ssh.com.

Is there any other library that works better than this?

JSch will accept it if your key is not ciphered.

Answer 2

You can see for yourself that the key isn't in the expected format. How did you generate it?