Spent about an hour trying to figure out why I couldn't log into Windows over SSH using an authorized key. I got to the point of manually running the server and watching the debug output, and still got nothing useful. Supposedly Windows was looking at my authorized_keys file, concluding that my key wasn't in it, and failing.
The problem? I used a Powershell command to grab the public key off my webserver, and that command re-wrote the file as UTF-16, which OpenSSH doesn't like.
Conclusion: When the problem isn't DNS, the problem is Powershell.
Simon Jaeger
npub1ez…qwagq
2026-08-27 20:47:42 UTC
Author Public Key
npub1ezwmkgpt0tlgn2kgz385gph3qfrqcc7z02qgg5xkkcg0dtg2cmfstqwagqPublished at
2026-08-27 20:47:42 UTCEvent JSON
{
"id": "2a7a5ee46772ffada2d464392936f59753e215b8e0bee04ffeff8084211bc0e6",
"pubkey": "c89dbb202b7afe89aac8144f4406f102460c63c27a808450d6b610f6ad0ac6d3",
"created_at": 1787863662,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
[
"proxy",
"https://procrastodon.net/users/simon/statuses/117169433017859571",
"activitypub"
],
[
"client",
"Mostr",
"31990:6be38f8c63df7dbf84db7ec4a6e6fbbd8d19dca3b980efad18585c46f04b26f9:mostr",
"wss://relay.ditto.pub"
]
],
"content": "Spent about an hour trying to figure out why I couldn't log into Windows over SSH using an authorized key. I got to the point of manually running the server and watching the debug output, and still got nothing useful. Supposedly Windows was looking at my authorized_keys file, concluding that my key wasn't in it, and failing.\nThe problem? I used a Powershell command to grab the public key off my webserver, and that command re-wrote the file as UTF-16, which OpenSSH doesn't like.\nConclusion: When the problem isn't DNS, the problem is Powershell.",
"sig": "2bea5e7cbb55ae9baff1cd0d89797585e872e9fb28911034cdd575c8393d733eb33330876f0bc2c7de651d992c0d92970e709b2d61ea8fee2747c704c7329966"
}