TortoiseGit does not remember passphrase

Question

Created key for authorization: ssh-keygen -C “your@email.com” -t dsa. Public key sent to git administrator. Setup passphrase caching by configuring ssh-agent for Windows. The process is described at http://help.github.com/ssh-key-passphrases/ Created .bash_profile. Now if I work in console it asks only once for passphrase and I can clone/pull/fetch/push to our server without entering it till computer restart, after that need to enter passphrase again.

However if I do operations in TortoiseGit it always asks for passphrase and does not store it. TortoiseGit → Settings → Git → Credential. Select Credential helper: is set to "wincred - current Windows user". Used same ssh.exe as in console: Settings->Network->SSH Client. Suggestions like importing PuttyKeys do not work:

TortoiseGit still asks for passphrase
"Load Putty Key" check box is disabled for me when cloning.
Pageant does not help as well and our git server uses only OpenSSH.

Is there a way to force TortoiseGit to remember passphrase?

Version information:

TortoiseGit 1.8.16.0 (C:\Program Files\TortoiseGit\bin) 
1.9.5.msysgit.0 or Git 2.7.1

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:15

3

That OpenSSH is used on server side does not affect the client side.

Recommended usage for your scenario is to use tortoisegitplink as SSH client and PuTTY agent (pageant) for caching the password of the SSH key OR to use a SSH key w/o passphrase. If you really want to use openssh as SSH client, you might be interested in https://stackoverflow.com/a/14913230/3906760 for configuring openssh agent.

Btw.

the "Load Putty Key" check box is only enabled if tortoisegitplink is used as SSH client.
the credential helper only affects http and https transports and not SSH.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:15

Community

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answered Feb 26 '16 at 19:09

MrTux

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Why pageant forgets about imported keys on next start (after computer restart for example) and forces to enter passphrase again and again? – Aleksey Kontsevich Mar 07 '16 at 12:44
This is a security feature. If you don't care if your SSH key gets stolen, you can also use one without a passphrase (https://tortoisegit.org/docs/tortoisegit/tgit-ssh-howto.html) – MrTux Mar 07 '16 at 12:55
You can also add an entry to your autostart folder which automatically loads peagent with your key as first parameter... – MrTux Mar 07 '16 at 12:57
Anyway it will ask for passphrase, no? – Aleksey Kontsevich Mar 07 '16 at 13:52
Pageant only asks for a passphrase if the key has one. – MrTux Mar 07 '16 at 14:00
It has, I want it to remember it. – Aleksey Kontsevich Mar 07 '16 at 14:00
As I said: there is no such option for security reasons. It also doesn't make sense. – MrTux Mar 07 '16 at 14:01
Why it does not make sense?! Bad it has not – Aleksey Kontsevich Mar 07 '16 at 14:03
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If you store the passphrase an attacker can easily grab it which makes it the same as a key without a passphrase... – MrTux Mar 07 '16 at 14:04

TortoiseGit does not remember passphrase

1 Answers1