Editing remote files with Emacs using public key authentication
emacs, ssh, tramp
Solution
There is no TRAMP equivalent to `ssh user@host -i private-key.pem`. However, if you run the shell command `ssh-add private-key.pem`, then ssh (and thus TRAMP) will automatically use `private-key.pem` for authentication. Simply `ssh user@host` will work on the shell, and opening the file `/user@host:~/filename.txt` will work in emacs, without it prompting for a password.
Problem
How can I edit files on my remote host using my local Emacs when I can access the remote host only through SSH with public key authentication? Tramp handles normal password logins pretty well but I can't figure out how to get it work with key pairs. I'm using unix/linux on both ends.