The grumbling smurf: Using SSH private keys with git and IntelliJ's "IDEA ssh" on Windows

2010-10-12

Using SSH private keys with git and IntelliJ's "IDEA ssh" on Windows

Posted by espenhw at 21:46

Due to an unfortunate incident with my Linux laptop, I'm stuck working on my Windows gaming rig for a while. That is, of course, an adventure in itself; tonight's adventure was to get private SSH keys working on Windows when using IntelliJ's Git integration.

First step, of course, was to try Pageant. No dice. Then I tried choosing "native ssh" - that just made IntelliJ hang (with no way to cancel - really nice GUI there, guys).

Then the shoe dropped; maybe it pretends to be a "real" ssh client? One short check of my Windows home directory later I'd dropped my id_rsa private key file in %USERPROFILE%/.ssh, and IntelliJ happily picked it up.

3 comments:

Nate said...: I also found it useful to add HOME=%USERPROFILE% to the environment.; January 11, 2011 at 3:15 AM
DM said...: Great tip, thanks! I generated my key with PuttyGen.exe and exported to OpenSSH format. Then copied it to %USERPROFILE%/.ssh/id_rsa; January 19, 2013 at 5:59 AM
Ludo said...: You saved my day here. Thanks! Naming the file as id_rsa seems to be the final trick.; January 26, 2013 at 11:19 AM