SSH without passwords in Windows using cmder

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Being able to log into remote servers without remembering each unique password is one of the great things about the public-key system.

In Linux this is pretty much expected behaviour, but not so much in Windows. However, if you replace your command line with cmder instead, it’s a simple 3 step procedure.

  1. Open cmder\config\user-profile.cmd
  2. Remove the double colon :: from the start-ssh-agent.cmd line so it looks like this
    call "%GIT_INSTALL_ROOT%/cmd/start-ssh-agent.cmd"

When you next start cmder it will find any SSH keys you have in your profile directory %USERPROFILE%\.ssh and load then in the ssh-agent. If you have passwords on your SSH keys you will be prompted to unlock them.

This useful information discovered on a Gist comment.

Tsarpf commented on Apr 30
@Ciwan1859 with the newest version of Cmder, in:

[your cmder folder]\config\user-profile.cmd

you can just uncomment the line:

call "%GIT_INSTALL_ROOT%/cmd/start-ssh-agent.cmd"

by removing the :: in front of it and it should start working when you restart cmder.

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