Using git through cygwin on windows 8

Question

I've got a windows 8 dev preview (not sure if it's relevant, but I never had this hassle on w7) machine and I'm trying to clone a git repo from github.

The problem is that my ~/.ssh/id_rsa has 440 permissions and it needs to be 400. I've tried chmodding it but the any changes on the user permissions gets reflected in the group permissions (i.e. chmod 600 results in 660, etc). This appears to be constant throughout any file in the whole filesystem.

I've tried messing with the ACLs but to no avail (full control on my user and deny everyone resulted in 000)

here's a few outputs to help:

$ git clone [removed]
Cloning into [removed]...
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@         WARNING: UNPROTECTED PRIVATE KEY FILE!          @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Permissions 0660 for '/home/john/.ssh/id_rsa' are too open.
It is required that your private key files are NOT accessible by others.
This private key will be ignored.
bad permissions: ignore key: /home/john/.ssh/id_rsa
Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

$ ll ~/.ssh
total 6
-r--r----- 1 john None 1675 Nov 30 19:15 id_rsa
-rw-rw---- 1 john None  411 Nov 30 19:15 id_rsa.pub
-rw-rw-r-- 1 john None  407 Nov 30 18:43 known_hosts

$ chmod -v 400 ~/.ssh/id_rsa
mode of `/home/john/.ssh/id_rsa' changed from 0440 (r--r-----) to 0400 (r--------)

$ ll ~/.ssh
total 6
-r--r----- 1 john None 1675 Nov 30 19:15 id_rsa
-rw-rw---- 1 john None  411 Nov 30 19:15 id_rsa.pub
-rw-rw-r-- 1 john None  407 Nov 30 18:43 known_hosts

$ set | grep CYGWIN
CYGWIN='sbmntsec ntsec server ntea'

I realize I could use msysgit or something, but I'd prefer to be able to do everything from a single terminal

Edit: Msysgit doesn't work either for the same reasons

Answer 1

I've found a Cygwin-specific hack to get around this for now.

Short version:
Simply create a new empty windows group, use chgrp to change the group of id_rsa to this, and then deny read/write permissions for the group.

Long version:
Press the super key and type lusrmgr.msc. Use this manager to create an empty group, called say EMPTY_GROUP

Now we need to tell Cygwin about this new group.

mkgroup > /etc/group

Next we update the group of id_rsa:

chgrp EMPTY_GROUP ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Finally, go find id_rsa in Windows Explorer, and under the Security tab in Properties, deny read/write permissions, and you should be good to go.

I'm not sure how Cygwin was able to handle this in 7 but not 8, but the problem seems to stems from the group of the id_rsa file being None, a group that always has full read/write access.

Also, this seems to only work for the ssh.exe that comes with Cygwin, so if you want to use say ssh with git, overwrite the ssh.exe from bin in your git install with the one from the bin folder in your Cywgin install.

Answer 2

There is no Need for an empty group.

During the Installation of cygwin all files belong to no group. You can check this by doing an ls -al. You will see that no group ("none") is on the files. Just change it to Users:

chgrp Users *

After this you can chmod whatever you like.