I for the life of me can't seem to get openSSH to work on Ubuntu Server 10.10 with keys I generated in PuttyGen on my Windows machine. After hours of trial and error and web searches I can't get my ssh service to accept my private key!

Here is my sshd_config.

I generated my public and private keys using Putty in Windows then used a ssh connection to paste my key from putty directly into my authorized_keys2 file located in */etc/ssh/publickeys/authorized_keys2*

The authorized_keys2 file looks something like: ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAA... with no email or anything at the end of it. I just pasted it straight from PuttyGen without using a key comment.

I feel like it's not working because of some nuance I am not understanding or some unusual setting or incompatibility. I've restarted the ssh service (and the machine) to no avail.

What are some common pitfalls I might have gotten myself into? Is there a simpler way to generate ssh keys that putty can use in windows?