Question

Server refused public-key signature despite accepting key

I use filezilla (tried a few different clients) to FTP into my digitalocean droplet with a public key. I have been doing this with success for years.

Seemingly overnight (although there was a FileZilla product update in there), this connection stopped working. I now get an error in FileZilla:

Status:	Server refused public-key signature despite accepting key! 

I’m not really sure what this means. I’m able to SSH into the server directly using a tool like git bash. In /var/log/auth, there’s not really anything of any use either.

Unsure where to even start, google hasn’t been super helpful.

The droplet is running ubuntu 20.04


Submit an answer


This textbox defaults to using Markdown to format your answer.

You can type !ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!

Sign In or Sign Up to Answer

These answers are provided by our Community. If you find them useful, show some love by clicking the heart. If you run into issues leave a comment, or add your own answer to help others.

I resolved this by completely deleting the site connection from FileZila and re-adding it with the exact same info.

I solved this with the following two settings in sshd_config

AllowUsers root PermitRootLogin without-password

Please note I do not use passwords and only use ssh keys.

Bobby Iliev
Site Moderator
Site Moderator badge
July 23, 2022

Hello,

It looks like that FileZilla no longer has your SSH private key. You can follow the steps here on how to set that up so that you could be able to again SFTP using FileZilla:

https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/droplets/how-to/transfer-files/

Basically, in the Connection section, click SFTP. This is where you add your Droplet’s private SSH key. Click Add key file…, then locate your Droplet’s private SSH key on your local machine. If FileZilla prompts you to convert the file into a supported format, click Yes.

Hope that this helps!

Best,

Bobby

Try DigitalOcean for free

Click below to sign up and get $200 of credit to try our products over 60 days!

Sign up

Become a contributor for community

Get paid to write technical tutorials and select a tech-focused charity to receive a matching donation.

DigitalOcean Documentation

Full documentation for every DigitalOcean product.

Resources for startups and SMBs

The Wave has everything you need to know about building a business, from raising funding to marketing your product.

Get our newsletter

Stay up to date by signing up for DigitalOcean’s Infrastructure as a Newsletter.

New accounts only. By submitting your email you agree to our Privacy Policy

The developer cloud

Scale up as you grow — whether you're running one virtual machine or ten thousand.

Get started for free

Sign up and get $200 in credit for your first 60 days with DigitalOcean.*

*This promotional offer applies to new accounts only.