Monthly Archives: January 2022

Cisco ASR “private key not found” Error

I was working on a ASR running code: asr1000rp1-ipbasek9.02.02.01.122-33.XNB1.bin. I wiped the config and started over from the last setup, and tried to SSH in. I was continually getting denied, and check the router – This error showed up.

1w2d: SSH2 0: RSA_sign: private key not found
1w2d: SSH2 0: signature creation failed, status -1

My first thought was to recreate the cert – so I did, still a no go.

I then recreated the cert with a different label or name, and then told the ASR to use this key pair instead – and everything worked. Its like I could not find the default key pair. The commands that I did to fix this are:

crypto key gen rsa general-keys label KEYPAIR-1 modulus 2048

ip ssh rsa keypair-name KEYPAIR-1

Then the ASR gave this back:

Jan 13 07:08:51: %IOSXE-7-PLATFORM: SIP0: sntp: resetting on error 0.273 > 0.1
Jan 13 07:08:52: %SSH-5-DISABLED: SSH 2.0 has been disabled
Jan 13 07:08:52: %SSH-5-ENABLED: SSH 2.0 has been enabled