jenkins-cli not authenticating with provided ssh private key

Question

[Help]

Description of Problem jenkins-cli not authenticating with provided ssh private key

Observed

when passing the jenkins-cli command:

java -jar ~/jenkins-cli.jar -s http://localhost:8080 -i ~/.ssh/ccdevops who-am-i

The console output is:

Authenticated as: anonymous

Authorities:

Desired

Jenkins should authenticate as the user with the matching public key in their profile

Relevant Information

• jenkins v 2.46.3 and using the correct cli jar for the version
• Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.0-78-generic x86_64)
• only using recommend plugins
• running on azure cloud in china east datacenter
• azure network security group for the vm is configured to allow traffic
• ssh key being used was created on the ubuntu machine jenkins is running on and the public key is in the users entry in the jenkins user database
• Key was created using the instructions on the github site
• jenkins-cli is running on the server and not from a remote host

Steps Tried Already

• tried different keys with and without passphrases
• tried the web address with localhost and the ip address
• tried other jenkins-cli commands with same result
• tried to create other users and putting an public ssh key in their profile. (no duplicate keys between users)
• tried moving the location of the jenkins-cli jar from server root to jenkins home directory

Answer 1

You should also specify the SSH method and the user on the command line with -ssh and -user USER_NAME respectively. After that, your command would look like this:

java -jar ~/jenkins-cli.jar -s http://localhost:8080 -i ~/.ssh/ccdevops who-am-i -ssh -user USER_NAME

Also note that you'll need to be able to access the server via SSH as well.