Puttygen saved keys and FreeBSD ssh

From: Ric (ric@digital-animations.com)
Date: 12/17/02 

From: ric@digital-animations.com (Ric)
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 11:15:07 GMT

I have several private keys in text files saved from PuTTYgen on Windows but
when I add these to authorized_keys2 in my .ssh directory in FreeBSD they
don't work. They work fine when I simply cut and paste from the box in
PuTTYgen but that is in a different format - in fact it says at the top of the
box "Public key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys2 file".

The format change is obvious between the two but it seems I can't simply
rearange the key saved to a text file into the same format as that which I cut
and paste direct from PuTTYgen - it looks OK but doesn't work.

Does anyone know a way to convert a saved text file public key to the format
required for authorized_keys2 file? I realise this doesn't make too much sense
but if you've tried it yourself you'll know what I mean. I have people sending
me their saved public key files for inclusion on our mail server but I can't
actually use them unless there is a conversion method, and even if I ask them
to cut and paste rather than save I know the thickest among them will still
save to file, send me the file as they leave the office for a sales trip to
the US and then complain to upper management that they couldn't get their
important mail whilst away.

Cheers
Ric

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