error: cannot run ssh: No such file or directory when trying to clone on windows

Question

I am trying to clone a remote repository on Windows, but when I did this:

git clone [email protected]:organization/xxx.git

I got this error:

error: cannot run ssh: No such file or directory
fatal: unable to fork

Am I missing something?

Hafner

Answer 1

You don't have ssh installed (or don't have it within your search path).

You can clone from github via http, too:

git clone http://github.com/organization/xxx

Archibaldo

when googling, i read that there is easier way in case i used cygwin (which is my case). – Hafner

In this case, just install the ssh package. It's been a while since I worked with cygwin, but I think you just need to restart the setup and select the ssh package. – Archibaldo

msysgit-- another alternative. – Greenway

Answer 2

Check if you have installed ssh-client. This solves the problem on docker images, even when ssh keys are present.

On Debian images:

apt-get install openssh-client

On Alpine images:

apk add openssh-client

Hepcat

The correct package name is openssh-client – Sanborne

and RUN apk add openssh-client works on alpine image builds – Egress

Answer 3

Most likely your GIT_SSH_COMMAND is referencing the incorrect public key.

Try:

export GIT_SSH_COMMAND="ssh -i /home/murphyslaw/.ssh/your-key.id_rsa

then

git clone [email protected]:organization/xxx.git

Trichocyst

Had the same error message but a different cause, 'ssh' missing from PATH; export GIT_SSH_COMMAND=/usr/bin/ssh fixed, thanks. – Gloria

Answer 4

I am aware that it is an old topic, but having this problem recently, I want to bring here what I resolve my issue.

---

You might have this error on these conditions :

• You use a URL like this : [email protected]:organization/repo.git
• And you run a kind of command like this directly : git clone [email protected]/xxxxx.git whereas you don't have ssh client (or it is not present on path)
• Or you have an ssh client installed (and git clone xxx.git work fine on direct command line) but when you run the same kind of command through a shell script file

---

Here, I assume that you don't want to change protocol ssh git@ to http:// ([email protected]:organization/repo.git -> http://github.com/organization/repo.git), like my case, cause I needed the ssh format.

---

So,

• If you do not have ssh client, first of all, you need to install it
• If you have this error only when you execute it through a script, then you need to set GIT_SSH_COMMAND variable with your public ssh key, in front of your git command, like this :

GIT_SSH_COMMAND="/usr/bin/ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa" git pull

(Feel free to change it depending on your context)

Brittan

Perfect answer, my bash script is working now. Thank you! – Basrhin

Answer 5

I had this issue right after my antivirus moved the cygwin ssh binary to virus vault, and restored it after.

Symptoms:

• SSH seems properly installed
• SSH can be run from command line without problem

Another option before reinstalling ssh in this particular case: check the ssh command permissions

$ ls -al /usr/bin/ssh.exe
----rwxrwx+
$ chmod 770 /usr/bin/ssh.exe

Beaux

Answer 6

I got the same error on the Alpine container in the CI-CD pipeline. I have added openssh package and it worked.

RUN apk add --no-cache git openssh

Pyrophoric

Answer 7

You can try these as well

ssh-add ~/.ssh/identity_file
chmod 400 ~/.ssh/identity_file

Dituri

400 revokes your own write access. That may or may not be what you actually want. 600 will permit writing as well as reading, for your own account only. – Hairline

Answer 8

It so happened in my case that the new pair of ssh keys linked with my git account were not accessible.

I had to sudo chmod 777 ~/.ssh/id_rsa.* to resolve the issue.

Montane

Whatever you are hoping to accomplish, chmod 777 is wrong and dangerous. You will want to revert to sane permissions ASAP (for your use case, probably chmod 600 or 640 or even 644 depending on the ownership and group) and if you have had world writable system files on a public-facing system, at the very least investigate whether it could have been breached and used as a pivot point for breaking into your organization’s network. – Hairline

Answer 9

If your local drive is a mapped drive and you get that error message, consider changing directory to folder on local "C:" drive.

I encounted same message when I was on x:\\sys\windows_mapped_drive.

Once I cd to local c:\foobar\clone_project drive my git clone command worked.

Byproduct