putty doesn't save private keys

Question

I'm using Putty on a Windows 2019 RDP session. The About on Putty shows:

Thycotic Secure Build

Build platform: 64-bit x86 Windows
Compiler: Visual Studio, unrecognised version, _MSC_VER=1929
Embedded HTML Help file: no
Source commit: 84e3afffe6697615052551996214010c4c504f99

I use Putty to connect to Solaris servers using a public/private key pair.

Sometimes, but not always, when I configure the Putty session and save the entry in Connection->SSH->Auth Private key file for authentication, the entry for the Private key file for authentication disappears after saving.

When I browse to the location of the private key and select it (either with Open or double-click) it populates the field successfully and clicking on Open connects to the server correctly.

This is the situation for the current server I am configuring Putty for. I configured another Putty connection using keys earlier today and it worked correctly. I have not logged out/in of the RDP session in since then.

I've tried editing the Putty session, deleting it and recreating it, but Putty does not save the setting.

I've restarted Putty too, but with no difference - I can select the private key, populate the Putty configuration with it, it works when I click Open, but it disappears after saving and going back in to Putty. Has anyone in the community had this problem and found a work around?

Thanks,
Jono

Answer 1

I was as taken aback too that the 2019 PuTTY build was stamped thycotic. I'm not going to attempt to recreate the error in another PuTTY version. I have resolved this now.

PuTTy stores the key definition in \HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY\Sessions against each server.

I created and a new string value for PublicKeyFile for the server I was configuring and this resolved the issue.