I’m using OpenSSH 3.x on all servers both Windows and Linux / Unix and Macs as well to remotely access files and services. With OpenSSH for Windows I faced with the following error:


C:\unix\Console2>ssh servername.hu -l balint
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@ WARNING: UNPROTECTED PRIVATE KEY FILE! @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Permissions 0644 for '/cygdrive/x/.ssh/id_rsa' are too open.
It is recommended that your private key files are NOT accessible by others.
This private key will be ignored.
bad permissions: ignore key: /cygdrive/x/.ssh/id_rsa
Enter passphrase for key '/cygdrive/x/.ssh/id_rsa':


This is of course not the way it should be - it should normaly authenticate with the keyfiles; however on Windows we don’t have chmod to change the permissions. It turned out, that NT rights are not successfuly loaded with Cygwin, if your files are on a network drive - and X: is a remote server for me.

So - instead of running unnecessary circles: we can change the CYGDRIVE and the CYGPATH variables (even temporarily) to check our .ssh folder on a local path:


set CYGDRIVE=c:
set CYGPATH=\unix

copy x:\.shh c:\unix\.shh


And voila:


C:\unix\Console2>ssh servername.hu -l balint
Last login: Mon Mar 19 17:11:58 2007 from xx.xx.xx.140
[balint@servername.hu ~]$


This entry was posted on Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 17:22 and is filed under Ubuntu Linux. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.