Can you clarify exactly what you mean by the last sentence? What does "see" mean in this context, and after what actions exactly, and what is the symptom of not connecting?
I can connect to the server enough to get rejected. As an analogy, I can get to the GUI login page, but then it's not taking my password. (Obviously, this isn't the case, but the best way I can describe what it's like to be able to reach the server successfully, but then be turned down for security reasons).
After firing up putty and pointing it to
User@FreeNAS.duckdns.org: port (example, clearly), and associating the connection with the private key I have locally, generated in a pair with the public key associated with the user on FreeNAS, the connection starts, but immediately gives me the error I mentioned before. According to putty (or my interpretation of the error) I've sent a public key to the server, which is then being rejected? Provided that I associated the session with the private key, as directed in the guide, I'm not sure why this is the case. Initially, I thought this had something to do with generating an odd pair of public and private keys, but after making a couple different sets and having them all look the same (in terms of file configuration, not content), I think I'm doing it right.
I end up with one .ppk private key, and one just "file" with no extension. It's a plaintext file I can open with notepad and just copy into the SSH part of the user on FreeNAS, so I think that's right. My cause for concern, however, stems from this looking different than the configuration I use to locally SSH into my box, with a private.ppk and a pair.ppk. My saved session points to the pair.ppk, rather than the private key, but putty won't let me point to just the plaintext file (public key) with the new pairs I've generated.
Did you go through all the troubleshooting stuff at the end of the post?
As I mentioned, yes, but I can't change some of the permissions on windows shares.
I guess this is the symptom. Is this PuTTY telling you this?
Yes.
Are you talking about simply SSHing into your machine? You don't need or use shares for that.
I'll give this a shot and see how it turns out. I had created a test user, but besides my jail storage, my whole box is pretty much a windows share (From the top, I've made tank/NAS, which is a windows share, and then there's just jail storage at tank/jails, but I'll throw something else up there and see what sticks).
However. When you SSH in, you go to your home directory of course. If you create a new test account where the home directory is not in a Windows share, see if you can get in and manipulate things in that home directory. If you can, you should then be able to navigate anywhere in the machine. You don't need to start where the files of interest are located.
This is good to know. I'm not particularly adept at looking for files with just putty, but some access is better than none. At the end of this whole process, I would like to be able to (safely) browse my remote windows shares, either through firefox or something that looks like windows explorer, but we'll see what comes together.
I appreciate your quick response, and I'll keep you posted on how things develop!