SSH Demystified in Windows

Private keys location

This is why is so confusing.

If you installed Git, and SSH that comes with it, the keys should be in ~/.ssh. But, very often - they’re not. Start a Git Bash and it will search for it in home dir. If you start a standard cmd.exe it will look for it in Git’s install directory (.../Git/.ssh).

You can unify this strange behavior by using HOME variable.

setx HOME -your-home-dir-s

For TortoiseGit, everything is totally different.

Specify multiple private keys

But without any authentication agent.

On a temporary, per command basis, you can use ssh -i switch:

 ssh host -i /var/root/.ssh/id_rsa

Put it in ~/.ssh/config file.

For a permanent solution, add the following option (with path) to your ~/.ssh/config

IdentityFile /var/root/.ssh/id_rsa

It is possible to have multiple identity files specified in configuration files; all these identities will be tried in sequence. So, just add above line to your config.

More advanced setup in config

Put the following content in a file “%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%.ssh\config”

set F="%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%\.ssh\config"

echo. >> %F%
echo Host fbm >> %F%
echo     HostName um-1764.conepuppy.com >> %F%
echo     User vcolovic >> %F%
echo     Port 4322 >> %F%
echo     IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa >> %F%

But, it reads from another directory, so move it there: mv “%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%.ssh\config” “%PROGRAMFILES(X86)%\Git.ssh\config”

Very important:

This is the one + plus permanent (on a user level, no /m switch):

set HOME=%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%
setx HOME "%HOME%

Now, I believe, even Git will use the right directory. GitHub is already ok.

And, how to find out if it’s wrong? Just type ssh-keygen and wait to see where it will suggest to save a file.

One small utility is:

ssh-keyscan um-1764.conepuppy.com -p 4322

Just redirect output of this command to a ~/known_hosts

Set up SSH for Git - Bitbucket - Atlassian Documentation - Confluence Getting Started with Git and GitHub on Windows - Kyle Cordes

Setting up multiple GitHub accounts on Windows - Kevin Pelgrims

I found this in: “c:\Program Files (x86)\Git\cmd\gitk.cmd”

@rem Get the abolute path to the parent directory, which is assumed to be the
@rem Git installation root.
@for /F "delims=" %%I in ("%~dp0..") do @set git_install_root=%%~fI
@set PATH=%git_install_root%\bin;%git_install_root%\mingw\bin;%PATH%

@if not exist "%HOME%" @set HOME=%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%
@if not exist "%HOME%" @set HOME=%USERPROFILE%