Set up SSH

• Requirements
• Manage SSH keys on your local Windows machine
  • Add a new SSH key via PUTTYGEN
  • Add a new SSH key via SSH-KEYGEN
  • Add config file for SSH
  • Test the connection
• How to clone the remote private repo via SSH

Requirements

• The latest (full) version of Git Extenstions is installed
• git --version shows no errors; if not, add the location of the Git folder to the PATH
• There exists the GIT_SSH Windows environment variable (necessary for plink): C:\Program Files (x86)\GitExtensions\PuTTY
• PuTTY directory is on the system PATH: C:\Program Files (x86)\GitExtensions\PuTTY
• where ssh command shows the location of ssh.exe; if not, add the location of the Git\usr\bin folder to the system PATH

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Manage SSH keys on your local Windows machine

SSH keys are stored locally in %USERPROFILE%/.ssh directory. If it does not exist, create one.

Add a new SSH key via PUTTYGEN

• Open your command prompt and type puttygen. This will open the generator screen.
• Click Generate to generate a new key and move your mouse across the white area.
• Type in the passphrase (remember it wel!) and save the private key to %USERPROFILE%\.ssh directory as id_rsa.ppk.
  
• Also, save the OpenSSH version of the key as id_rsa file via the top menu Conversions -> Export OpenSSH key.

Add a new SSH key via SSH-KEYGEN

• Alternatively, you can generate the key via ssh-keygen command
• Save the key as id_rsa file in .ssh directory
• Open puttygen and load the generated key
• Save the corresponding private key as above for Puttygen

Add config file for SSH

• In your .ssh directory create an empty config textfile (no extension)
• For your remote host, e.g. BitBucket, add the configuration information. It will look something like this:
  

      Host BITBUCKET
      Hostname bitbucket.org
      User your-user-name-on-bitbucket
      PubKeyAuthentication yes
      IdentityFile id_rsa
  

Test the connection

• run ssh -T git@bitbucket.org
• you may see something like this:
  

      key_load_public: invalid format
      Enter passphrase for key '/c/Users/Andre/.ssh/id_rsa':
      logged in as Madrusnl.
  
      You can use git or hg to connect to Bitbucket. Shell access is disabled.
  

• you may ignore the invalid format error if you see the rest
• otherwise you can do some troubleshooting:
  • use -vvv option: ssh -T git@bitbucket.org -vvv
  • make sure you have registered your PUBLIC key (.pub) on the (BitBucket) server
  • make sure your IdentiyFile variable in the config file points to your PRIVATE key (without extension).

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How to clone the remote private repo via SSH

• make sure you have the private key for the remote repo in .ssh folder, e.g. id_rsa.ppk (otherwise create it as described hereabove)
• create the local folder to which you wish to clone the remote repo
• initialize the empty git repo in it by git init
• open the repo with Git Extensions
• in its menu, go to Repository, Remote repositories... and create a new remote repository. Call it origin (or any other name you like).
• Copy the SSH url of the BitBucket repo and paste it in the Url field
• For the PuTTY SSH field, browse to the private key in .ssh directory and pick it up
  
• Click on Load SSH key and type in your passphrase for the private key
• Test connection with Test connection
• If everything is ok, save changes and close
• Click on the light blue down arrow, choose Pull, fill in the right remote branch, e.g. master and choose Merge remote branch into current branch
  
• Click the Pull button
• If everything went fine, you should now see the branch tree with all the commits