Remote Backup Failure Due to "Error while creating a SSH client connection: not a valid RSA private key file"

Products

• VMware Avi Load Balancer

Issue/Introduction

When configuring remote backup on Avi, a new SSH user is created, and the private key from the backup server is imported. Mostly the key is in OpenSSH format on backup servers.

• If the key is pasted in OpenSSH format, Avi shows the error: Fail to generate public key from private key input

• If the key is imported as a file in OpenSSH format, Avi allows the upload.

• However the backup transfer to the remote server fails with the following error. For details, refer to the log file at: /var/lib/avi/log/scheduler.log

Environment

• All Environment

Cause

 

• Avi does not support OpenSSH private key format. While the GUI allows uploading the OpenSSH private key file, the backup process fails because the format is invalid for establishing SSH client connections.

Resolution

 

• Check the backup failure reason in the logs: /var/lib/avi/log/scheduler.log

• Look for the error message: not a valid RSA private key file

• Convert the SSH private key to RSA format on the backup server: ssh-keygen -p -m PEM -f <private_key_file>

• Re-import the converted RSA private key into the Avi GUI

• Re-run the remote backup process

 

• Only RSA keys are supported when using an SSH key to transfer backup configuration files to a remote machine. For more details, refer to the official documentation:
  Backing Up the Avi Load Balancer Configuration