Csdrhrt

I have Cygwin installed on Windows 7. I made default install. I would like to use ssh config file (~/.ssh/config) to set host and options for connecting.

Normal ssh command is not able to find the config while I try to connect: ssh host
If I explicitly specify config file, everything is OK: ssh -F ~/.ssh/config

I cannot found any option to set ssh client, something like /etc/ssh

Maybe ssh doesn't know where is my home folder? (I have set HOME environment variable to my home folder)

You have to run ssh-host-config first. It will generate a "ssh_config" file in /etc/.

I had the same issue. I wanted to use ~/.ssh/config because I was already using that directory for other applications and didn't want to maintain 2 copies. So creating an /etc/ssh_config directory wasn't the ideal solution.

As Fujimoto Youichi mentions, ssh looks at /etc/passwd for your home directory and not the $HOME environment variable.

The current cygwin versions (I'm using 2.6) no longer creates /etc/passwd as part of the install. However, it is easy to create a new one:

    mkpasswd -c -p "$(cygpath -H)" > /etc/passwd

• 
  -c Adds the current user to the passwd file


• 
  -p "$(cygpath -H)" Adds your current home directory

https://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/mkpasswd.html has more details on the available flags.

I haven't looked at the code, but ssh's preference seems to be:

1. /etc/ssh_config


2. ~/.ssh/config

So if you only want to use the ssh configuration information from ~/.ssh/config, then be sure to delete /etc/ssh_config.

Also, be sure to open a new cygwin terminal window after making changes, for them to become available.

ssh command looks for its config file under home directory from /etc/passwd.
So setting HOME variable will not work.

There are many ways but we can fix it by simply making a symlink as follows.

ln -s ~ /home

The other answers didn't work for me. I just created c:cygwin64etcssh_config and pasted in the following default / example file:

# This is the ssh client system-wide configuration file.  See

# ssh_config(5) for more information.  This file provides defaults for

# users, and the values can be changed in per-user configuration files

# or on the command line.



# Configuration data is parsed as follows:

#  1. command line options

#  2. user-specific file

#  3. system-wide file

# Any configuration value is only changed the first time it is set.

# Thus, host-specific definitions should be at the beginning of the

# configuration file, and defaults at the end.



# Site-wide defaults for some commonly used options.  For a comprehensive

# list of available options, their meanings and defaults, please see the

# ssh_config(5) man page.



# Host *

#   ForwardAgent no

#   ForwardX11 no

#   RhostsRSAAuthentication no

#   RSAAuthentication yes

#   PasswordAuthentication yes

#   HostbasedAuthentication no

#   GSSAPIAuthentication no

#   GSSAPIDelegateCredentials no

#   BatchMode no

#   CheckHostIP yes

#   AddressFamily any

#   ConnectTimeout 0

#   StrictHostKeyChecking ask

#   IdentityFile ~/.ssh/identity

#   IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa

#   IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_dsa

#   Port 22

#   Protocol 2,1

#   Cipher 3des

#   Ciphers aes128-ctr,aes192-ctr,aes256-ctr,arcfour256,arcfour128,aes128-cbc,3des-cbc

#   MACs hmac-md5,hmac-sha1,umac-64@openssh.com,hmac-ripemd160

#   EscapeChar ~

#   Tunnel no

#   TunnelDevice any:any

#   PermitLocalCommand no

#   VisualHostKey no

#   ProxyCommand ssh -q -W %h:%p gateway.example.com

#

#

Host *

    Port 22

Hope that helps the next person.

According to the accepted answer, by use command to initialize:

ssh-host-config

You can also create empty /etc/ssh_config in Cygwin, which will work same.

The /etc/ssh_config creating by ssh-host-config is also empty with all comment out lines.

Reload SSH with new config:

To effect config, you can just finish editing /etc/ssh_config without restart service.

Cygwin ssh expects the config to be in /home/$USER. But the home directory "~" in cygwin is C:/Users/$USER, indeed /home is empty. You can have both C:/Users/$USER/.ssh and /home/$USER/.ssh be valid paths, by creating a symlink:

ln -s ~ /home/$USER