SSHTectia 6.2 Fails to Generate SSH Keys

[scottalanmiller]

If you are working with SSHTectia 6.2 and attempting to generate an SSH key or run SSH or connect via SCP or SFTP you may run into this rather obscure error:

Error: Failed to initialize conversion library: Failed to open library `(null)/lib/shlib/i18n_icu.so', syserror:       Permission denied(13), `(null)/lib/shlib/i18n_icu.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory      '. / Could not load converter library `(null)/lib/shlib/i18n_icu.so'. / Failed to open library `(null)/lib/shlib      /i18n_iconv.so', syserror: Permission denied(13), `(null)/lib/shlib/i18n_iconv.so: cannot open shared object fil      e: No such file or directory'. / Could not load converter library `(null)/lib/shlib/i18n_iconv.so'.

Failed to generate the key pair for user myuser

This error is caused by a bug in Tectia 6.2. What is causing this, at least in my testing, is a lack of a manually created .ssh directory within the user’s home directory. If the user does not have a home directory at all, which is where we commonly see the issue, the bug obviously also appears. So to fix this simply:

mkdir -p ~myuser/.ssh; chown -R myuser ~myuser

The rumor is that Tectia will be resolving this issue in the 6.3 release. But in the meantime, manually working around the bug is required.

Originally posted on my Linux blog in 2012 here: http://web.archive.org/web/20140825114908/http://www.scottalanmiller.com/linux/2013/04/22/sshtectia-6-2-fails-to-generate-ssh-keys/