Could not load key file. File 'id_rsa.pub' could not be loaded or does not contain a private key. - File Zilla

Question

While trying to connect to AWS instance using SFTP, it gives me an error while setting the ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub file for connection.

Error - Could not load key file. File 'id_rsa.pub' could not be loaded or does not contain a private key. - File Zilla

Solution

Realized that it needed a private file (key) to be given for setting up SFTP connection. ~/.ssh/id_rsa is the private file ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub is the public file One has to use the private file for FileZilla to connect.

Comments

[Toto]

And what is the error?

[JannieT]

I have an active ~/.ssh/id_rsa private key file that I use to ssh into my server, but I get this same error message when I try to set this in FileZilla. Any idea what the problem is?

[Chaitanya Bapat]

Do you mean it says "Could not load key file. File 'id_rsa' could not be loaded or does not contain a private key. - File Zilla"?

[JannieT]

yes. That is exactly what I mean.

[Chaitanya Bapat]

I use MacOS and FileZilla does accept private key. More importantly, to connect to AWS you ideally should need a pem file (from security standpoint)

[Chaitanya Bapat]

This is very weird coz id_rsa is the private key file and only possible explanation is that it might be corrupt for some reason. Can you try downloading the pem file or creating a new pem file and using that?

[JannieT]

Not so. If my private id-rsa file was corrupt then I would not be able to use it many times every day to ssh into several servers. But heh, I'm just reporting what I am experiencing, not trying to explain the problem. If someone has a similar problem as me, then try my answer below.

[Chaitanya Bapat]

Alright.. makes sense!