EC2: Transmit Public-Key Authentication

** Post Transmit 4 Update **

Transmit 4 offers this out of the box without the workaround below, simply click on the key next to the password field under the sftp tab and show Transmit where your key file resides.  All done.  Thanks Panic.

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Original Post (Still valid for users of Transmit 3 and earlier)

Looking through the Google results it doesn’t seem that there is an entry that simply spells out how to connect to an ec2 instance with Transmit, so here it is:

Edit your ~/.ssh/config file (or create one if you don’t already have it) and add an entry that looks like this (variable areas are marked like this {variable})

Host {the shortcut name that you want to use to connect to the instance}

User {the user you will connect with, for instance root}

Port 22
Hostname {host name or ip address}
IdentityFile {location of your private key file, for example ~/.ssh/id_rsa-gsg-keypair}
TCPKeepAlive yes
IdentitiesOnly yes

And thats it, you should be able to connect to your instance (or any server you have private-key authentication setup on) with Transmit.  Simply use the shortcut name that you entered after “host” in the server field in the transmit connection screen and leave the password and user fields blank.  MAKE SURE that you are using sftp and that you have poked a hole in the firewall on port 22 with the ec2 tools (ec2-authorize -p 22).

January 17th, 2009 - Posted in ec2 | |