This is my last resort. I've been trying to figure out the problem here for hours.

Here's the deal: I have copied my private key from machine #1 onto machine #2. Machine #1 is able to connect via ssh to a server with my public key just fine, but machine #2 gives the following output, when trying to connect to the server:

$ ssh -vvv -i /home/kevin/.ssh/kev_rsa [email protected] -p 22312
OpenSSH_5.3p1 Debian-3ubuntu6, OpenSSL 0.9.8k 25 Mar 2009
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config
debug1: Applying options for *
debug2: ssh_connect: needpriv 0
debug1: Connecting to 192.168.1.244 [192.168.1.244] port 22312.
debug1: Connection established.
debug3: Not a RSA1 key file /home/kevin/.ssh/kev_rsa.
debug2: key_type_from_name: unknown key type '-----BEGIN'
debug3: key_read: missing keytype
debug3: key_read: missing whitespace
debug3: key_read: missing whitespace
debug3: key_read: missing whitespace
debug3: key_read: missing whitespace

...


Permission denied (publickey).

There is obviously more debug output that I have omitted, and I can provide upon request. I am convinced however that it doesn't like my private key file.

I also had a suspicion that it has to do with how I copied it from machine #1 to machine #2. I copy/pasted the text from the private key onto a flash drive. This might be the problem, however, when I duplicated this method on another working private key file, and did a diff on the original, to the copy/pasted one, they are identical.

I've been struggling with this. If I could just get a little more information on why it doesn't like my key, I could fix it I'm sure. Anyone have any ideas on this? Is there some meta-data somewhere that tells ssh that a file is in fact an RSA key?