I'm having the same problem.

It seems to be ignoring the information in the server section of the settings.xml file... specifically it's ignoring the sshExecutable and scpExecutable attributes of the server config (notice that the key is found and used however).

In my case I'm deploying with putty on windows. Deploy works but site-deploy does not.

[INFO] [site:deploy]
Using private key: C:\mypath\mykey.ppk
scpexe://myhost/data/maven/site/restart - Session: Opened
Executing command: ssh -i "C:\mypath\mykey.ppk" -o "
BatchMode yes" myuser@myhost/ "mkdir -p /data/maven/site/restart/."

'ssh' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

scpexe://myhost/data/maven/site/restart - Session: Disconnecting
scpexe://myhost/data/maven/site/restart - Session: Disconnected

FYI - For me, this issue is a blocker.

I have same issue, to deploy site reports from windows to linux server.
and it is a blocker for me.

This still isn't fixed, even though it seems to have been resolved in MSITE-25.

Still doesn't work in 2.0.5 version. For me this is a major blocker, because it makes the site-deploy goal completely unusable when on windows box. Maybe somebody should put a note in http://maven.apache.org/guides/mini/guide-deploy-ssh-external.html to stop people from wasting time trying to fix their configuration...

the current SNAPSHOT still exist bug, add few lines to fix it .
MNG-2324 will change to Add a getWagon(Repository) method to the WagonManager.
If can use this method in the furture,the current ugly fix can be remove.

This issue is over a year old. Why is there not even anyone assigned to it?
There seems to be ample descriptions of the problem and even a patch or two.

There are currently 949 open issues for Maven 2 plugins alone. Many of us working on Maven do it in our spare time. Unfortunately there never seems to be enough spare time.