Can Maven Wagon plugin use a private key for scp? - maven-2

Question

Can Maven Wagon plugin be configured to use a private key for ssh/scp? Everything I've tried still leaves maven to ask me for a password when it gets to the point of scp-ing.

Answer 1

You should be able to specify the path to the private key in the server element in your settings.xml:
The repositories for download and
deployment are defined by the
repositories and
distributionManagement elements of
the POM. However, certain settings
such as username and password should
not be distributed along with the
pom.xml. This type of information
should exist on the build server in
the settings.xml.
<settings xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/SETTINGS/1.0.0"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/SETTINGS/1.0.0
http://maven.apache.org/xsd/settings-1.0.0.xsd">
...
<servers>
<server>
<id>server001</id>
<username>my_login</username>
<password>my_password</password>
<privateKey>${user.home}/.ssh/id_dsa</privateKey>
<passphrase>some_passphrase</passphrase>
<filePermissions>664</filePermissions>
<directoryPermissions>775</directoryPermissions>
<configuration></configuration>
</server>
</servers>
...
</settings>
id: This is the ID of the
server (not of the user to login as)
that matches the id element of the
repository/mirror that Maven tries to
connect to.
username, password: These elements appear as a pair denoting the login and password
required to authenticate to this
server.
privateKey,
passphrase: Like the previous two elements, this pair specifies a path
to a private key (default is
${user.home}/.ssh/id_dsa) and a
passphrase, if required. The
passphrase and password elements may
be externalized in the future, but for
now they must be set plain-text in the
settings.xml file.
filePermissions, directoryPermissions: When a repository file or directory is
created on deployment, these are the
permissions to use. The legal values
of each is a three digit number
corresponding to *nix file
permissions, ie. 664, or 775.
Note: If you use a private key to
login to the server, make sure you
omit the <password> element.
Otherwise, the key will be ignored.
Password Encryption
A new feature - server password and
passphrase encryption has been added
to 2.1.x and 3.0 trunks. See details
on this page.
Pay a special attention to the "note": If you use a private key to login to the server, make sure you omit the <password> element. Otherwise, the key will be ignored. So the final configuration will be close to:
<settings>
...
<servers>
<server>
<id>ssh-repository</id>
<username>your username in the remote system</username>
<privateKey>/path/to/your/private/key</privateKey>
<passphrase>sUp3rStr0ngP4s5wOrD</passphrase><!-- if required -->
<configuration>
...
</configuration>
</server>
</servers>
...
</settings>

Answer 2

I know this is an old thread, but it looks like the Wagon plugin is reading settings.xml (e.g. username) but not using all of the settings. I could not get it to stop asking for Kerberos username/password during scp. (Looks like there might have been changes to plugin late 2016 that affect this.)
Just adding this answer in case it helps someone else.
For me, the solution was even simpler: totally skip using 'settings.xml'
and simply specify 'scpexe' instead of 'scp' for protocol (like under distributionManagement section of pom.xml). This then uses your machine's default SSH configuration (unix settings under ~/.ssh).
<plugin>
<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
<artifactId>wagon-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.0</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>upload-to-server</id>
<phase>deploy</phase>
<goals><goal>upload-single</goal></goals>
<configuration>
<fromFile>file-to-upload</fromfile>
<url>scpexe://username#serverName/dirname-to-copy-to
<toFile>file-to-upload</toFile>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>

Answer 3

I wanted to do the exact same thing today in conjunction with the maven-site-plugin (3.9.1) and was also hitting some roadblocks (specifically, the wagon-ssh plugin insisted on asking me for my Kerberos username and password).
What finally worked for me with wagon-ssh-3.4.3:
<!-- add scp support for mvn site:deploy -->
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.wagon</groupId>
<artifactId>wagon-ssh</artifactId>
<version>3.4.3</version>
</dependency>
and in settings.xml:
<server>
<id>ssh-repository</id>
<username>pridkdev</username>
<privateKey>${user.home}/.ssh/pridkdev.ppk</privateKey>
<filePermissions>664</filePermissions>
<directoryPermissions>775</directoryPermissions>
<configuration>
<interactive>false</interactive>
<strictHostKeyChecking>no</strictHostKeyChecking>
<preferredAuthentications>publickey</preferredAuthentications>
</configuration>
</server>
I guess what was crucial is the <configuration> block and there especially the <preferredAuthentications> setting.

Answer 4

I found the necessary info here:
http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-deploy-plugin/examples/deploy-ssh-external.html