Using privateKey access AWS

[toby1kenobi]

I'm using this module via grunt-scp, to try to transfer files to an AWS Ubuntu server. I have a *.pem file containing my private key (downloaded from AWS), should I be able to use this to connect? In my gruntfile I have something like this:

        scp: {
            options: {
                host: 'myhost.com',
                username: 'ubuntu',
                privateKey: require('fs').readFileSync('c:/Users/Toby/Documents/toby.pem')
            },
            default: {
                files: [{
                    cwd: '.',
                    src: ['admin/**'],
                    dest: '/home/ubuntu/'
                }]
            }
        }

When I try to execute my task it prompts me for a password, I just hit enter at this point, and then it tells me, "error Authentication failure. Available authentication methods: publickey". Am I doing something wrong here, or misunderstanding?

[mscdex]

It's certainly possible as long as grunt-scp supports that setting or it passes those options on directly to ssh2.

[mscdex]

Closing this for now. If you find that grunt-scp isn't passing on the required options supported by this module, you may want to file an issue at their repo. This module does support private keys of various types as well as encrypted keys (provided you also set the passphrase option as well). However, you may want to use an ssh agent to make things easier, especially if you have encrypted keys.