ed25519 newby can't make remote connections work

[rbelew]

I'm unclear just how to make podman remote connections work, and I
think it's because of some misunderstanding I have of the ed25119 ssh
access required by podman. I'm hoping this forum might help me.

I have a laptop podman installation, and created an ed25119 id edId4pm

I also have podman also installed on two remote hosts, call them
NEAR_IP and FAR_IP. On each I have put an entry in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
corresponding to edId4m.pub

I've let podman know about the remote hosts:

 	 podman system connection add NEAR_IP --identity ~/.ssh/edId4pm ssh://USER@NEAR_IP/run/user/1001/podman/podman.sock
 	 podman system connection add FAR_IP --identity ~/.ssh/edId4pm ssh://USER@FAR_IP/run/user/1001/podman/podman.sock

Initially I have set FAR_IP as the default connection:

	  podman system connection default FAR_IP

and listing the connections seems correct:

laptop % podman system connection ls

    Name                    URI                                                      Identity                                                  Default     ReadWrite
    NEAR_IP                 ssh://USER@NEAR_IP:22/run/user/1001/podman/podman.sock   /Users/USER/.ssh/edId4pm                                  false       true
    FAR_IP                  ssh://USER@FAR_IP:22/run/user/1001/podman/podman.sock    /Users/USER/.ssh/edId4pm                                  true        true
	podman-machine-default  ssh://core@127.0.0.1:65173/run/user/501/podman/podman.sock   /Users/USER/.local/share/containers/podman/machine/machine  false       true
	podman-machine-default-root  ssh://root@127.0.0.1:65173/run/podman/podman.sock            /Users/USER/.local/share/containers/podman/machine/machine  false       true

I am able to run podman ps to see a test container on FAR_IP,
after I am challenged for the ed25119 KEY PHRASE.

laptop % podman ps                                   
Key Passphrase: 
CONTAINER ID  IMAGE                           COMMAND               CREATED     STATUS      PORTS                 NAMES
b6835a189574  docker.io/library/nginx:latest  nginx -g daemon o...  3 days ago  Up 3 days   0.0.0.0:8080->80/tcp  basic_httpd

But if I change the default connection to NEAR_IP and do the same podman ps experiment I get:

   Error: unable to connect to Podman socket: failed to read identity "/Users/USER/.ssh/edId4pm": x509: decryption password incorrect

This is despite the fact that I can ssh from laptop into NEAR_IP using ssh -i edId4pm NEAR_IP just fine?!

Any ideas about what I'm doing wrong greatly appreciated!