Netbeans Private Key Authorisation Problem

An issue that I encountered with key based authentication

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

The fix is pretty simple;

  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.

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