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Quick Reference of Cygwin

Last modified: Mar, 2012

Cygwin is an excellent Unix emulating environment in Windows.

Run ssh-agent under Windows

However, ssh-agent doesn’t naturally run in Cygwin shell. Here are some treaks to get it work.

1. Add these lines to file $HOME/.bashrc:

export SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/.ssh-socket
ssh-add -l 2>&1 >/dev/null

if [ $? = 2 ]; then
   # Exit status 2 means couldn't connect to ssh-agent; start one now
   ssh-agent -a $SSH_AUTH_SOCK >/tmp/.ssh-script
   . /tmp/.ssh-script
   echo $SSH_AGENT_PID >/tmp/.ssh-agent-pid
fi

function kill-agent {
   pid=`cat /tmp/.ssh-agent-pid`
   kill $pid
}

1. Add an environmental variable “SSH_AUTH_LOCK”, and set its value to “/tmp/.ssh-socket”: Click ‘Start’ –> ‘My Computer’ –> Right click –> ‘Properties’ –> ‘Advanced’ –> ‘Environmental Variables’ –> ‘New’.
1. To use ‘ssh-agent’, open a Cygwin session, and run

ssh-add

To kill this process, run “‘kill-agent’” in Cygwin shell.

Open Cygwin terminal here with right click

It is quite handy if adding Cygwin terminal to the right click menu. Here is how.

1.Install ‘chere’ package in Cygwin by running its “setup.exe”.
2.Open a Cygwin terminal as the Administrator(right click, and “run as Administrator”), and type

chere -i

to install chere to the right-click menu.

Now right click on any folder and there will be “Bash prompt here”. (Note that right click on an empty space will not give “Bash prompt here”.)