Using a private key file with sftp over lftp

I ran into a few issues trying to use a non-default private key file with lftp. Here is how I got it to work:

inside ~/.lftprc put

set sftp:connect-program "ssh -p 23 -a -x -i /home/my_user/.ssh/key_name_here"

The important items are what is passed to the -i option – this should be the private key you want to use. In my example I’m also using a non-standard port (-p 23 for port 23)

To connect, run:

lftp -u your_user_name,blank sftp://your-server.org

For this to work you need to:

• specify sftp:// as the server type
• set the password to a junk value, I use “blank”