Using PuTTY to SSH and authenticate with keys

[Brad De Vries]

Hey all, I'm trying to setup PuTTY (version 0.58) on a WinXP box and
SSH into my Red Hat 9.0 server (openssh-server-3.5p1-11).  A simple
SSH seems to work fine but I'd like to get to the next level where I
can authenticate with keys rather than being prompted for a password.

1) Using PuTTYGen, I generated public and private keys with a passphrase.

2) I started Pageant (PuTTY Authentication Agent), imported my private
key and entered the passphrase from #1.

3) Copied the public key file to the RH server ~/.ssh/authorized_keys,
ripped out all comments and put the data on one line.

4) Created a PuTTY session with the following settings:
  a) auto-login username (on the Connection | Data screen)
  b) turned on the "allow agent forwarding" and specified my private
key (on the Connection | SSH | Auth screen)

5) Tried to login.

Sadly, it still prompts for my password and I see nothing in the log
about it trying to authenticate with the keys.

Obviously I'm missing something or not understanding something
correctly, so any suggestions would be welcome.

TIA,
Brad.