Can no longer use ssh-add: Error connecting to agent

[dom-devel]

Purpose of the issue

• Bug report (encountered problems/errors)
• Feature request (request for new functionality)
• Question

Description of the issue

Can no longer add ssh keys using ssh-add. Instead I'm thrown the following error:

Error connecting to agent: No such file or directory

I believe this has started happening since the latest Windows update.

My set-up
I'm currently booting an ssh-agent at startup, having un-commented before:

call "%GIT_INSTALL_ROOT%/cmd/start-ssh-agent.cmd"

I'm running:

• Windows 10
• Latest preview/alpha
  

Further debugging
I took a look at the environment variables set:

SSH_AUTH_SOCK & SSH_AGENT_PID

Both are set:

• SSH_AUTH_SOCK: /tmp/ssh-yzpgZ44bVaMU/agent.17940
• SSH_AGENT_PID: 4304

Which correctly creates into:

C:\Users\Dominic\AppData\Local\Temp\ssh-yzpgZ44bVaMU\agent.17940

I tried setting, SSH_AUTH_SOCK to the full windows path above, however at this point I then get:

Could not add identity ".ssh\id_rsa": invalid format

Apologies if this is an issue with ConEmu, I'm not knowledgeable enough to be able to separate the two cleanly.

[lneveu]

Same issue here after the latest Windows update :/
(with ConEmu version 161206)

[raulfragoso]

Same issue, with latest version (180506)

[Stanzilla]

try which ssh-agent Windows 1803 comes with their own OpenSSH version by default now, you probably want to remove that from PATH

[lneveu]

Thanks @Stanzilla! I removed %SYSTEMROOT%\System32\OpenSSH\ from my PATH and it's working fine now :)

[raulfragoso]

Thanks @Stanzilla ! Works for me.

[dom-devel]

Yep that's worked for me as well. Cheers @Stanzilla!

[SiqiLu]

@Stanzilla Thanks, that's worked for me.

[johncrim]

Another option (possibly better than using another copy of openssh) is to use the Windows ssh agent. Check status in powershell:

get-service ssh*

If the service is disabled, start it and set to manual:

Set-Service -Name ssh-agent -StartupType Manual
Start-Service ssh-agent

If there's a reason to use a git version of openssh instead of the windows-installed version, that would be good to know.

[Stanzilla]

We need to support older versions of Windows as well

[scottfalkingham]

Instead of removing %SYSTEMROOT%\System32\OpenSSH\ from your path, merely add the following to your user-profile.cmd file.

set "PATH=%GIT_INSTALL_ROOT%\usr\bin;%PATH%"

It will add git\usr\bin to your path again, but this time it comes before the %SYSTEMROOT%\System32\OpenSSH\ entry, which allows the ssh-agent calls to work again.