Question

I am trying to create my public/private rsa key pair with msysgit

I run this command:

ssh-keygen -C "[e-mail]" -t rsa

Everything looks fine, I have the message

Enter file in which to save the key (/c/Users/user/.ssh/id_rsa)

Then I have the confirmation:

Your public key has been saved in project.pub

But I can’t access the folder! It does not exist, it is not even an hidden folder. I don’t understand why it does not generate. I am using Windows 7 Ultimate.

Answer 1

You can start with creating the expected folder, and check you can access it:

mkdir "%USERPROFILE%\.ssh"
dir "%USERPROFILE%\.ssh"
cd "%USERPROFILE%\.ssh"

Make sure you do not have a Windows environment variable named HOME, which would take precedence when using ssh.exe or ssh-keygen.exe commands from a CMD session (as opposed to a bash session).

echo HOME='%HOME%'

You can use (from CMD or bash)

ssh-keygen -C "vonc@xxxx" -t rsa -P "" -f ~/.ssh/mykey
                                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

That will create a %USERPROFILE%\.ssh\mykey and %USERPROFILE%\.ssh\mykey.pub.

---

As a test, I just created my key without any problem (Seven Ultimate 64bits, msysgit 1.6.5.1.1367.gcd48)

$ ssh-keygen -C "vonc@xxxx" -t rsa
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/c/Users/VonC/.ssh/id_rsa):# just press enter
                                                                # to accept the
                                                                # default location
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):                     
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in /c/Users/VonC/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /c/Users/VonC/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
xx:yy:zz:aa:bb:cc:... vonc@xxxx

With the result:

VonC@P ~/.ssh
$ ls -alrt
total 10
-rw-r--r--    1 VonC Administ      642 May 23 21:47 known_hosts
drwxr-xr-x   43 VonC Administ    16384 Jun 15 17:01 ..
-rw-r--r--    1 VonC Administ      398 Jun 19 16:14 id_rsa.pub
-rw-r--r--    1 VonC Administ     1675 Jun 19 16:14 id_rsa
drwxr-xr-x    2 VonC Administ        0 Jun 19 16:14 .

Could you check in your bash session (so not CMD) what value your $HOME environment variable is set?

VonC@P ~/.ssh
$ env|grep HOME
HOMEPATH=\Users\VonC
HOME=/c/Users/VonC     # <=== this must be correctly set
HOMEDRIVE=C: