When you have a private key in Terminalski, you can use it for SSH 'publickey' user authentication. The following outlines how you can set that up for OpenSSH.
Open 'Private Keys' window
Generate or import private keys
Importing OpenSSH Private Keys
Select a private key and copy its public key to Windows clipboard
Before you can use the newly selected private key for your login, you need to add its public key to your server account. For copying the public key to Windows clipboard, you can use the right-click popup menu as shown on the following screenshot. A public key is stored in plain text, and it is the same as the content of its corresponding .pub file.
Close 'Private Keys' window and connect to your server
You cannot yet use the newly selected private key in Step 3 for SSH login. Hence, you need to use your current or existing user authentication method.
Open or create '~/.ssh/authorized_keys' file on your server
If your account folder on your server does not yet have '~/.ssh' folder or '~/.ssh/authorized_keys' file, you can create them by executing the following commands:
mkdir -p ~/.ssh touch ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
You can use any text editor (ex. vi, nano, etc.) for opening ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file. Once the file is opened, append the public key from Step 3 by pasting it from Windows clipboard; you can repeat Step 3, if your Windows clipboard no longer has it. For the pasting, you can use the right-click popup menu 'Paste' or press CTRL+SHIFT+V.
After adding the public key, save and close the file. Your SSH server account is now ready to accept 'publickey' user authentication. If you have enabled Login Agent, you should first clear its cached credentials (ex. passwords, private keys, etc.) before trying the newly added private key for user authentication.
Please note that when you first install Terminalski, 'publickey' user authentication is not the first preferred option; it is set to more traditional 'password' user authentication. Hence, you will still get a password input popup when you are connected to your server, and you need to explicitly change it to 'publickey' method. If you want to change this behavior and set the 'publickey' as your first choice, you need to update the configuration profile as shown in Step 6.
Update configuration profile
A configuration profile in Terminalski includes preference options for SSH sessions. If you want to mainly use private keys for your SSH logins, you should change the preference setting for user authentication; 'publickey' should be the first on the list.
Please note that when you are creating an address book entry for your SSH server, you can select '<try-all>' for 'publickey' user authentication and avoid explicitly selecting a private key. In such case, Terminalski will indeed try all private keys in your Home Folder for login. However, SSH servers usually have a maximum number of allowed authentication attempts (ex. OpenSSH initially set it to 6), and you might not be able to login if you have too many private keys.
If you want to avoid such mishaps, you can set the option to '<select-on-login>' and explicitly select the private key you use for the server. You can also enable Login Agent and pre-load the actual private key for the server before starting a session; Terminalski first tries the private keys in Login Agent when '<try-all>' is selected.
