How to run ssh-add on windows?

Question

I'm following #335 Deploying to a VPS , and near the end of the episode, we need to run ssh-add to give server access to github repo.

The problem is how do I run it in windows? What need to install?

I know that to run ssh to access the remote server, I can use Putty. But this command needs to run locally, I do know how to use Putty to do this.

Answer 1

If you are trying to setup a key for using git with ssh, there's always an option to add a configuration for the identity file.

vi ~/.ssh/config

Host example.com
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/example_key

Answer 2

Make sure you have Git installed and have git's cmd folder in your PATH. For example, on my computer the path to git's cmd folder is C:\Program Files\Git\cmd

Make sure your id_rsa file is in the folder c:\users\yourusername\.ssh

Restart your command prompt if you haven't already, and then run start-ssh-agent. It will find your id_rsa and prompt you for the passphrase

Edit: It looks like start-ssh-agent doesn't work correctly if you're using PowerShell. If you use PowerShell and Git, you could install posh-git. It comes with a cmdlet called Start-SSHAgent which achieves the same outcome as start-ssh-agent.

Answer 3

ssh-add is the command to add a key to a local agent. Putty has it's own agent program called pageant, which serves the same function.

Answer 4

One could install Git for Windows and subsequently run ssh-add:

Step 3: Add your key to the ssh-agent

To configure the ssh-agent program to use your SSH key:

If you have GitHub for Windows installed, you can use it to clone repositories and not deal with SSH keys. It also comes with the Git Bash tool, which is the preferred way of running git commands on Windows.

1. Ensure ssh-agent is enabled:

   • If you are using Git Bash, turn on ssh-agent:

     # start the ssh-agent in the background
     ssh-agent -s
     # Agent pid 59566
     

   • If you are using another terminal prompt, such as msysgit, turn on ssh-agent:

     # start the ssh-agent in the background
     eval $(ssh-agent -s)
     # Agent pid 59566
     

2. Add your SSH key to the ssh-agent:

   ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa
   

Answer 5

In order to run ssh-add on Windows one could install git using choco install git. The ssh-add command is recognized once C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin has been added as a PATH variable and the command prompt has been restarted:

C:\Users\user\Desktop\repository>ssh-add .ssh/id_rsa
Enter passphrase for .ssh/id_rsa:
Identity added: .ssh/id_rsa (.ssh/id_rsa)

C:\Users\user\Desktop\repository>