SSH Private Key Permissions using Git GUI or ssh-k

Question

Recently I've been unable to clone or push to github, and I'm trying to find the root cause.

This is on windows

I have cygwin + git as well as msysgit.

Msysgit was installed with the following options:

• OpenSSH
• Use Git from Windows Command Prompt

That gives me 4 environments to try to use git in:

• Windows cmd prompt
• Powershell
• Git Bash
• Cygwin

Somehow I've managed to get myself into a position where when I try to clone a repository using msysgit, cmd.exe, or Powershell, I get the following error:

> Initialized empty Git repository in
> C:/sandbox/SomeProject/.git/
> @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
> @    WARNING: UNPROTECTED PRIVATE KEY FILE!          @
> @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
> Permissions 0644 for
> '/c/Users/Ben/.ssh/id_rsa' are too
> open. It is recommended that your
> private key files are NOT accessible
> by others. This private key will be
> ignored. bad permissions: ignore key:
> /c/Users/Ben/.ssh/id_rsa Permission
> denied (publickey). fatal: The remote
> end hung up unexpectedly

This is using the .ssh folder in my c:\users\ben\ folder, which is what is used by msysgit. I suspect cygwin works because the .ssh folder is located elsewhere, but I'm not sure why

In Git Bash, I check the permissions:

$ ls -l -a ~/.ssh

Which gives me:

drwxr-xr-x    2 Ben      Administ        0 Oct 12 13:09 .    
drwxr-xr-x   34 Ben      Administ     8192 Oct 12 13:15 ..    
-rw-r--r--    1 Ben      Administ     1743 Oct 12 12:36 id_rsa
-rw-r--r--    1 Ben      Administ      399 Oct 12 12:36 id_rsa.pub    
-rw-r--r--    1 Ben      Administ      407 Oct 12 13:09 known_hosts

These permissions are apparently too relaxed. How they got this way, I have no idea.

I can try to change them...

$ chmod -v -R 600 ~/.ssh

which tells me:

mode of `.ssh' changed to 0600 (rw-------)
mode of `.ssh/id_rsa' changed to 0600 (rw-------)
mode of `.ssh/id_rsa.pub' changed to 0600 (rw-------)
mode of `.ssh/known_hosts' changed to 0600 (rw-------)

But it seems to have no effect. I still get the same error, and doing

$ ls -l -a ~/.ssh

yields the same permissions as before.

UPDATE:

I tried to fix the permissions to those files in cygwin, and cygwin reports their permissions correctly, gitbash does not: alt text http://cdn.cloudfiles.mosso.com/c54102/app7962031255448924.jpg

Any ideas on how I can really fix these permissions?

Answer 1

For Windows 7 using the Git found here (it uses MinGW, not Cygwin):

1. In the windows explorer, right-click your id_rsa file and select Properties
2. Select the Security tab and click Edit...
3. Check the Deny box next to Full Control for all groups EXCEPT Administrators
4. Retry your Git command

Answer 2

Not a direct answer to the primary question, but on your question of how cygwin's folder works... As a general rule, cygwin puts all of "your" files under the equiv of c:\cygwin\home\username. It treats that folder for any user-specific settings rather than the Windows user directory.

Answer 3

@koby's answer doesn't work for me, so I make a little change.

cd ~/.ssh
chmod 700 id_rsa.pub

This works well for me on Mac.

Answer 4

Changing file permissions from Properties, disabling inheritance and running chmod 400 didn't work for me. The permissions for my private key file were:

-r--r----- 1 alex None 1766 Mar 8 13:04 /home/alex/.ssh/id_rsa

Then I noticed the group was None, so I just ran

chown alex:Administrators ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Then I could successfully change the permissions with chmod 400, and run a git push.

Answer 5

What did the trick for me was to update CYGWIN environment variable with: "tty nodosfilewarning". Didn't even need to chmod the key.