Package: pyhoca-cli Version: 0.4.0.3 I've created a session and defined a private key (not at the location ~/.ssh/id_rsa). In the command line, I run "pyhocal-cli -k ...". However, pyhoca-cli still attempts to use ~/.ssh/id_rsa. Here's what I believe happens: x2go/defaults.py: autologin is defaulted to True x2go/utils.py: autologin is translated to 'look_for_keys', so look_for_keys is now set to True x2go/backends/control/plain.py (in the function connect): We hit is following if statement: if look_for_keys: key_filename = None pkey = None (so key_filename and pkey are cleared) Finally in backends/control/plain.py, we hit the if statement that calls one of 3 paramiko connect calls. However, since key_filename and pkey are set to None, but look_for_keys is set to true, the software ends up trying to use the ~/.ssh/id_rsa file, if that doesn't work, it will then ask for a password, but never uses the passed in private key. If you comment out the if statement in "plain.py": if look_for_keys: key_filename = None pkey = None then the software does in fact use the private key passed in at the command line. I don't know why that if statement is there. I'm sure there is a reason, but don't know the codebase well enough to say that would be a global fix.