PHP Manual
SSH2 Functions
Authenticate using a public key in a variable

ssh2_auth_pubkey

(PECL ssh2 >= 1.4.0)

ssh2_auth_pubkey — Authenticate using a public key in a variable

Description

ssh2_auth_pubkey(
    resource $session,
    string $username,
    string $pubkey,
    string $privkey,
    string $passphrase = ?
): bool

Authenticate using a public key in a variable.

Parameters

session: An SSH connection link identifier, obtained from a call to ssh2_connect().
username: Name of the user to authenticate as on the remote server.
pubkey: Public key in OpenSSH's format. It should look something like: ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAA....NX6sqSnHA8= rsa-key-20121110
privkey: Private OpenSSH key. It should begin with: -----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
passphrase: If privkey 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'));
$publicKey = file_get_contents('/home/username/.ssh/id_rsa.pub');
$privateKey = file_get_contents('/home/username/.ssh/id_rsa');

if (ssh2_auth_pubkey($connection, 'username',
$publicKey,
$privateKey, '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.