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SFTP Account




Support > Online Guides > Technical Guide > SFTP Account

Each district has a SameGoal SFTP account. This account is most often used to store ephemeral data files uploaded and processed nightly for integrations with your student information system. It can also be used to transfer large amounts of data securely during district onboarding.

Configure your SFTP account link

Steps
To configure your SFTP account:

  1. Generate your keypair
  2. Sync your public key
  3. Verify you can connect

1. Generate your keypair link

Each SameGoal SFTP account uses public key authentication to ensure secure access. Public key authentication is a more secure means of identifying yourself to a login server than using a password.

When using public key authentication, you generate a public/private key pair consisting of a public key (which everybody is allowed to know) and a private key (which you keep secret and do not give to anybody). Your public key is placed on the server you wish to connect to (in this case, on the SameGoal SFTP server in an authorized_keys file) and your private key is kept on your local workstation. When you use your private key to connect, it generates a signature. A signature created using your private key cannot be forged by anybody who does not have that key, but anyone who has your public key can verify that a particular signature is genuine.

Mac or Linux. Use the ssh-keygen utility to generate an OpenSSH-style public/private key pair on the command line.

Windows. Use PuTTYgen to generate a PPK-style public/private key pair.

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If necessary, you may convert an OpenSSH-style private key to a PPK-style private key or vice versa easily.

2. Sync your public key link

Add your public key to your SFTP account authorized_keys file using the SameGoal web interface:

3. Verify you can connect link

Use an SFTP tool to connect. Connection information:

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If you recently added or changed key information, wait 60 minutes before trying to connect.

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Do not use SSH or SCP to test the connection. You do not have shell access and these programs will appear to hang when you appear to connect.

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If you are having trouble connecting, make sure you are using keys compatible with the SFTP tool you are using. For example:

Navigating your SFTP account link

Each SFTP account has the following directory structure:



info