lftp with key + passphrase

Question

I'm using lftp to send files to an SFTP server, but I don't how to connect with key and passphrase.

So in sftp, I can do this:

sftp -i .ssh/id_rsa.mykey login@my.host.fr
Enter passphrase for key '.ssh/id_rsa.mykey': my passphrase here

So, how can I use lftp with this connection method?

I have also tried:

lftp -e "set ssl:key-file .ssh/id_rsa.mykey" sftp://my.host.fr

Answer 1

An answer based off Jean-Luc Boss's and wiak's, but a bit more explicit:

To connect to a server, lftp uses an ssh command, by default ssh -a -x. It doesn't have an explicit option for changing the keyfile to use, but as you note, ssh does, so we just need to set lftp to connect using ssh -a -x -i <keyfile> before it connects.

You can do this in a few ways:

• If you're using lftp's interactive command line, run the following command before you connect:

  set sftp:connect-program "ssh -a -x -i <keyfile>"
  

• If you're specifying a bunch of commands to lftp using -c, just add that set command to the start of your command sequence:

  lftp -c 'set sftp:connect-program "ssh -a -x -i <keyfile>"; connect sftp://user@example.com; mirror -eR files; ...'
  

• If you always going to want to use the same key, just add that set ... line from the first bullet to your ~/.lftprc file (or one of the other configuration file options listed in man lftp).

Answer 2

LFTP doesn't seem to pass or does not use the identity file specified with "ssl:key-file" with SSH. You have to specify it in the sftp:connect-program option:

ssh -a -x -i yourprivatekeyfile

This should work.

Answer 3

Just add:

set sftp:connect-program "ssh -a -x -i yourprivatekeyfile"

to your ~/.lftprc, as most of the settings can be set permanently there.

Answer 4

You must specify the username, and just pass anything as the password, to skip it asking.

lftp -u user,xxx sftp://...