The ~/.ssh/identity file I've been using can no longer be loaded into the agent with the ssh-add program in my fedora 23 system which has: openssh-clients-7.1p1-6.fc23.x86_64 The previous fedora 22 system with this version: openssh-clients-6.9p1-9.fc22.x86_64 works fine with the same file. File info: The key size is 1024 bits. The file header looks like: zooty> od -c identity 0000000 S S H P R I V A T E K E Y 0000020 F I L E F O R M A T 1 . 1 \n Naturally, this could be a bug in one of the zillion libraries loaded by ssh-add or even a compiler bug, but I figured I'd start with ssh-add since that's the program I run to get the error. No doubt you'll want the actual file and passphrase, but it will take a while for me to make sure I've switched to a new key everywhere before I feel safe attaching that info here (and maybe someone else has already tracked down this bug if I'm unbelievably lucky :-).
opensssh-7.1 in Fedora is compiled without SSH1 support, because it is long broken and outdated. If you really need to use SSH1, there is openssh-clients-ssh1 [1] package providing basic tools with SSH1 support (ssh1, scp1, ssh-keygen1). I didn't packaged ssh-agent and ssh-add with SSH1 support, because it should be rescue package and not something you should use regularly. The announcement unfortunately somehow missed release notes [2]. I am really sorry for confusing you, but I hope you will find your use case. [1] http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/rpminfo?rpmID=7130736 [2] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1285374
A more descriptive error than "bad passphrase" would make this more obvious :-).
FYI, the error message is caused by not-handling openssl errors. Every failure from openssl is considered as "bad passphrase" even though there are reasonable status messages. It is independently filled as a bug #2522 [1]. Feel free to close this bug as a duplicate of that one to bring some attention of developers. You are not the only one who is confused of this behaviour. [1] https://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2522
The patch in bug 2522 improves the error message somewhat (it says "invalid format" now).
Fixed as part of bug 2522: commit 155d540d00ff55f063421ec182ec8ff2b7ab6cbe Author: djm@openbsd.org <djm@openbsd.org> Date: Fri Feb 10 04:34:50 2017 +0000 upstream commit bring back r1.34 that was backed out for problems loading public keys: translate OpenSSL error codes to something more meaninful; bz#2522 reported by Jakub Jelen, ok dtucker@ with additional fix from Jakub Jelen to solve the backout. bz#2525 bz#2523 re-ok dtucker@ Upstream-ID: a9d5bc0306f4473d9b4f4484f880e95f3c1cc031 *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 2522 ***
Close all resolved bugs after release of OpenSSH 7.7.