SSH Demystified in Windows

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%
date 04. Apr 2013 | modified 29. Dec 2023
filename: SSH Demystified in Windows