ssh-keygen command not found when setting up Git on Windows

Question

I'm following the steps here. I'm on step 3 of Set Up SSH Keys.

When I type in:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "myemailhere"

I get the response:

ssh-keygen: command not found

What is this supposed to mean? I'm using the portable version of Git, I've got open bash.exe from inside the bin.

Answer 1

it would appear that you don't have ssh installed on your computer. you will need an ssh client, since it appears you on using windows you can use http://cygwin.com/ and it will come with one, I don't know about a portable version of ssh, though..

Answer 2

The tutorial on GitHub is wrong. The correct one is ssh-keygen -t rsa -C

I also had this problem.

Answer 3

I arrived here because I simply hadn't installed the program that gives the ssh-keygen command.

This resource lists how to do that for just about any system:

• macOS: brew install openssh
• Debian: apt-get install openssh-client
• Ubuntu: apt-get install openssh-client
• Alpine: apk add openssh
• Arch Linux: pacman -S openssh
• Kali Linux: apt-get install openssh-client
• CentOS: yum install openssh
• Fedora: dnf install openssh
• Raspbian: apt-get install openssh-client
• Docker: docker run cmd.cat/ssh-keygen ssh-keygen

I was using Ubuntu so I ran apt-get update && apt-get install openssh-client and then the ssh-keygen command worked as expected.