PHP Manual: Authenticate using a public key

Description

bool ssh2_auth_pubkey_file(
    resource $session,
    string $username,
    string $pubkeyfile,
    string $privkeyfile,
    string $passphrase = ?
)

Authenticate using a public key read from a file.

Parameters

session

An SSH connection link identifier, obtained from a call to ssh2_connect.

username

pubkeyfile

The public key file needs to be in OpenSSH's format. It should look something like:

ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAA....NX6sqSnHA8= rsa-key-20121110

privkeyfile

passphrase

If privkeyfile is encrypted (which it should be), the passphrase must be provided.

Return Values

Returns true on success or false on failure.

Examples

Example #1 Authentication using a public key

<?php
$connection = ssh2_connect('shell.example.com', 22, array('hostkey'=>'ssh-rsa'));

if (ssh2_auth_pubkey_file($connection, 'username',
                          '/home/username/.ssh/id_rsa.pub',
                          '/home/username/.ssh/id_rsa', 'secret')) {
  echo "Public Key Authentication Successful\n";
} else {
  die('Public Key Authentication Failed');
}
?>

Notes

Note:
The underlying libssh library doesn't support partial auths very cleanly That is, if you need to supply both a public key and a password it will appear as if this function has failed. In this particular case a failure from this call may just mean that auth hasn't been completed yet. You would need to ignore this failure and continue on and call ssh2_auth_password in order to complete authentication.