# Problems with ssh connections to FreeBSD from Windows 10 using key pair and ssh-agent



## Amjeerih (Mar 15, 2019)

On both a remote server with FreeBSD 12.0 and a virtualbox installation with the same, I can log in from Windows 10 via ssh using either a passphrase for the desired FreeBSD user, or with a ssh private/public key pair using the passphrase for the latter.

However, any attempt to use the Windows 10 ssh-agent to store the passphrase for the private key results in either a dropped connection (if normal passphrase/challenge authentication is disabled) with the message "Permission denied (publickey)," or a prompt for the desired FreeBSD user's password (if sshd permits passphrase/challenge authentication). In other words, the Windows 10 ssh-agent does not seem to be compatible with the available FreeBSD sshd servers.

I can log in to remote Linux installations using the key pair and Windows 10 ssh-agent. I can also log in to the FreeBSD boxes from Linux using a ssh key pair and ssh-agent.

I would appreciate any help or suggestions anyone here could offer. Thank you.

Edit: I neglected to mention that the behavior is exactly the same using either the built-in sshd or openssh-portable.


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## Amjeerih (Mar 18, 2019)

To get this working, I had to uninstall the default ssh (sshd server and ssh-agent) and use choco (Windows cli package manager) to install a more recent version.


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## 1Nikolay (Oct 26, 2021)

i try use winsshfs  (WInFSP) and  not may connect to my server FreeBSD    but normally login via Putty.
...... next day i found conclusion :    /etc/ssh/sshd_config  >  enable option:     PasswordAuthentication  yes 
and now all works !    and SSHFS win Manager work too.
Good luck !


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## astyle (Oct 27, 2021)

I just use the SSHd from base, and enable it during OS install. That saved me countless times. I probably should take time to button down the default installation, but right now, my machine is not even on all the time.  Beyond that - occasionally, I just delete the entire .ssh directory from my Windows user directory. This forces the Windows client to re-create the key pair every time. Works both in PowerShell and Putty.


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