Ssh – How to let TortoiseHg (Mercurial) on Windows use the Private Key file generated (by Puttygen)

mercurialpublic-keyputtysshtortoisehg

I have used Puttygen to create a public and a private key, and I'm now ready to let TortoiseHg on Windows 7 do a clone by going to

ssh://somebody@code.somewhere.com/somecode

but there seems to be no where to add the private key to TortoiseHg? (or even just the Mercurial command line)

The file is already some where on hard disk as somefile.ppk. Does someone know how to add it?

Best Answer

From the answer almost the same question at stackoverflow.com (by David Tischler):

Add the following to the [ui]-section of the mercurial.ini in your home directory:

[ui]
ssh = tortoiseplink.exe -ssh -i "C:\Users\UserName\mykey.ppk"

Or if you want to specify your ssh username, add

[ui]
ssh = tortoiseplink.exe -ssh -i "C:\Users\UserName\mykey.ppk" -l myusername

(assuming your key is in "C:\Users\UserName\mykey.ppk").

Pageant (already mentioned by others) should work also (even though I haven't tried it myself).

Related Solutions

SSH – How to Change Private Key Passphrase

To change the passphrase on your default key:

$ ssh-keygen -p

If you need to specify a key, pass the -f option:

$ ssh-keygen -p -f ~/.ssh/id_dsa

then provide your old and new passphrase (twice) at the prompts. (Use ~/.ssh/id_rsa if you have an RSA key.)

More details from man ssh-keygen:

[...]
SYNOPSIS
    ssh-keygen [-q] [-b bits] -t type [-N new_passphrase] [-C comment]
               [-f output_keyfile]
    ssh-keygen -p [-P old_passphrase] [-N new_passphrase] [-f keyfile]
[...]
     -f filename
             Specifies the filename of the key file.
[...]
     -N new_passphrase
             Provides the new passphrase.

     -P passphrase
             Provides the (old) passphrase.

     -p      Requests changing the passphrase of a private key file instead of
             creating a new private key.  The program will prompt for the file
             containing the private key, for the old passphrase, and twice for
             the new passphrase.
[...]

SSH Key – How to Create a Public Key from a Private Key

Use the -y option to ssh-keygen:

ssh-keygen -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa -y > ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

From the 'man ssh-keygen'

 -y      This option will read a private OpenSSH format file and print an
         OpenSSH public key to stdout.

Specify the private key with the -f option, yours might be dsa instead of rsa. The name of your private key probably contains which you used. The newly generated public key should be the same as the one you generated before.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

SSH – How to Change Private Key Passphrase

SSH Key – How to Create a Public Key from a Private Key

Related Topic