For Git Bash

If you are running msysgit (I am assuming you are) and are looking to run Git Bash (I recommend it over TortoiseGit, but I lean to the CLI more than GUI now), you need to figure out what your home directory is for Git Bash by starting it then type pwd (On Windows 7, it will be something like C:\Users\phsr I think). While you're in Git Bash, you should mkdir .ssh.

After you have the home directory, and a .ssh folder under that, you want to open PuTTYgen and open the key (.ppk file) you have previously created. Once your key is open, you want to select Conversions -> Export OpenSSH key and save it to HOME\.ssh\id_rsa. After you have the key at that location, Git Bash will recognize the key and use it.

Note: Comments indicate that this doesn't work in all cases. You may need to copy the OpenSSH key to Program Files\Git\.ssh\id_rsa (or Program Files (x86)\Git\.ssh\id_rsa).

For TortoiseGit

When using TortoiseGit, you need to set the SSH key via pacey's directions. You need to do that for every repository you are using TortoiseGit with.

As per this chat discussion, on possible cause was:

• the value of HOME (correctly set to /C/Users/UserName)
• versus the shell used for the various commands (Cygwin, because it had ssh-copy-id command, contrary to the msysgit bash shell)

Since ssh-copy-id only copy a line to a file (See "ssh-copy-id and duplicates in authorized_keys", it was simpler to:

• generate the rsa keys in a msysgit bash session (the keys will be created in /c/Users/UserName/.ssh/id_rsa, snce $HOME refers to /c/Users/UserName/)
• copy manually the content of id_rsa.pub to the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys of the server (since a direct access to said server was possible here).

The OP user29600 fixed it!

1) Made sure that HOME was in as an environment variable using C:\Users\UserName as the path.

2) Created the RSA keys in MingW "ssh-keygen -t rsa" and allowing for the default setting in file name and assigning a proper passphrase.

3) Did "ssh-copy-id -i $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa.pub {USER}@{SERVER_IP}" to ensure RSA key auth was enabled for that user. 4) sent the .pub file to the server using "

scp $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa.pub {USER}@{SERVER_IP}:/tmp

5) installed git-core and gitosis and executed "sudo -H -u gitosis gitosis-init < /tmp/id_rsa.pub"

6) Had an error about permissions on the id_rsa file when using MingW.
Found this article that said to copy the ssh.exe file from C:\cygwin\bin to C:\Program Files\Git\bin and overwrite the file, included the necessary .dll files.
This step was because MingW was not setting or reading chmods properly... cygwin showed 600, MingW showed 644.
After copying over the ssh.exe file, I was able to properly chmod the files with MingW and the permission error went away.

7) "git clone gitosis@{SERVER_IP}:gitosis-admin.git" finally worked!