Could not generate ssh public key for heroku in Windows 7

Question

While I am trying heroku login through cmd in my machine, it says

Could not find existing public key
Would you like to generate one? [YN]

After that when I press 'y' and enter it says

Generating new ssh public key
Could not generate key: "ssh-keygen" is not recognized as a internal or external command operable program or batch file

Please help me.

See this previous answer: http://stackoverflow.com/a/11771907/538746 — Austin Lin, Feb 22 '13 at 07:04
@user2098336 it would be very important to choose the solution that solved your troubles to help other programmers facing the same issue in the future! — Jimmy Obonyo Abor, Sep 24 '13 at 11:04

score 34 · Answer 1 · edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:18

34

Heroku toolbelt includes git distribution which includes the required ssh-keygen.exe . I've just found it in C:\Program Files\git\bin . Locate your git folder and add it to your system path as described here: superuser.com/questions/284342/

edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:18

Community

1
1

answered Feb 22 '13 at 19:50

stys

707
7
23

4

As per a comment on another answer, and since this is the most upvoted (as it is correct), I'll note: if you use the **git bash** CLI to log into heroku using `heroku auth:login`, you will be able to generate an SSH key. If you use a normal `cmd` shell on windows with the same command, you will need to include your Git directory in your PATH; the reason for this behavior is because, as per yet [another comment](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11771378/ssh-keygen-is-not-recognized-as-an-internal-or-external-command/11771907#comment23206229_11771907), Git bash sets the PATH when it is run. – Chris Cirefice Apr 22 '14 at 08:26
in my case on Win 10 it is situated in C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin ! – CodeToLife Apr 27 '17 at 11:15

score 16 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 10 '13 at 09:30

16

I had the same problem and just solved it. I installed another CMD called Git Bash that you can download for free (http://git-scm.com/downloads) and then repeated the commands in that and it worked!

answered Apr 10 '13 at 09:30

GER

169
2

3

I pretty sure that the heroku toolbelt includes git bash now, if not at the time of the post. But, yeah, I made the same mistake, going straight for CMD as is habit -- same error. Since I already had git bash, tried that, and it worked charmfully! Thank you. – Todd Jun 07 '13 at 02:27

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 28 '14 at 18:09

For Win7 64-bit users, the file %HerokuPath%s\bin\ssh-keygen.bat looks like:

@SETLOCAL
@SET HOME=%USERPROFILE%
@"%HerokuPath%\..\Git\bin\ssh-keygen.exe" %*

But Heroku installs Git in Program Files (x86), so if you update the .bat file to:

@SETLOCAL
@SET HOME=%USERPROFILE%
@"C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\bin\ssh-keygen.exe" %*

Then you should be able to generate your ssh keys.

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 01 '16 at 13:00

Windows 10-64bit

I had installed git, then heroku toolbelt (which I think reinstalled git)

I had C\Program Files (x86)\Heroku\bin in my Environmental variable (probably generated when I installed heroku toolbelt) and if I looked in that filepath I had an ssh-keygen.bat - so it seemed like I should be able to just run ssh-keygen -t rsa from the command line.

That would be too easy, instead I get:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\bin>ssh-keygen -t rsa -f id_rsa
'"C:\Program Files (x86)\Heroku\..\Git\bin\ssh-keygen.exe"' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

Solution

type bash in command line to go into git bash mode then run ssh-keygen -t rsa

git bash:

mamwo@DESKTOP-9GVG6K8 MINGW32 /bin
$ ssh-keygen -t rsa
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/c/Users/mamwo/.ssh/id_rsa):
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in /c/Users/mamwo/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /c/Users/mamwo/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
SHA256:MMMYYYPPPUUUBBBLLIIICCKKEEEEYYYY mamwo@DESKTOP-9GVG6K8
The key's randomart image is:

Now when I look in C/User/mamwo/.ssh (the best way for me is through pycharms folder - windows sucks) I see my id_rsa and id_rsa.pub

But this 'cannot generate publickeys' issue all started for me because I had an 'I don't have public keys to add' issue when I cloned my repo (from github) to a new computer and found that I could push to github but not heroku.

Now that I have the keys - I have to add them

C:\Users\mamwo\Desktop\mv>git push heroku master
Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.

C:\Users\mamwo\Desktop\mv>heroku keys
You have no keys.

C:\Users\mamwo\Desktop\mv>heroku keys:add
Found an SSH public key at C:/Users/mamwo/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
Would you like to upload it to Heroku? [Yn]

Could not generate ssh public key for heroku in Windows 7

4 Answers4

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