Netbeans Private Key Authorisation Problem

Recently I ran into an issue with key based authentication between Netbeans and an sFTP server.  It was returning an error saying I had an invalid private key.

The key worked for other tools, so I was slightly confused why it wouldn’t for Netbeans.

After some digging I uncovered that Netbeans doesn’t like PPK files, it needs OpenSSH key files in order to connect with key based authentication

Here’s the fix;

1. Download PuTTY Key Generator
2. Open your PPK file (File > Load Private Key)
3. Convert your file (Conversions > Export OpenSSH Key)
4. Load this as your key file in Netbeans