Hi Salva,

I earlier used to reply to the person who answered, but was told to reply to the root thread, but I see your point and hence replying to you.

It was pretty dumb of me not to understand where the key_path is coming from. I googled up and found a few solutions to set up ssh keys working in Windows. Will surely keep you posted.

An easy way to set up public key authentication from a Windows machine:
1. Generate the public/private key pair in a linux box using ssh-keygen without passphrase. For instance:

   $ ssh-keygen -f win_id_rsa
   Generating public/private rsa key pair.
   Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): 
   Enter same passphrase again: 
   Your identification has been saved in win_id_rsa.
   Your public key has been saved in win_id_rsa.pub.
   The key fingerprint is:
   df:25:e9:a5:12:b1:ea:bf:fa:41:23:62:88:cb:4b:1e salva@topo
   The key's randomart image is:
   +--[ RSA 2048]----+
   |                 |
   |                 |
   |          .      |
   |   . .     o .   |
   |  . . o S = o o  |
   | . . . . = = =   |
   |  E     . + +    |
   | o o   .   o     |
   |  o     o++.     |
   +-----------------+
   [download]

2. Copy both the public and the private keys in some private folder in your Windows machine (you can use scp from the command line or WinSCP or FileZilla).
3. For every server and every account where you want to log using public key authentication, append the contents of the file with the public key (i.e. win_id_rsa.pub) into the file ~/.ssh/authorized_keys.
4. When using Net::SSH::Any, pass the path to the file containing the private key (i.e. win_id_rsa) via key_path.