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I'm attempting to setup Git with OpenSSH under Cygwin. I almost got everything setup. I have the agent and public key and all that.. but now I get this really weird error:

$ git pull -u origin master
Bad owner or permissions on /home/Jordan/.ssh/config
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

Googling it appears to be a permissions error(of course). One problem: the permissions look fine to me.

I've also tried doing a chmod 0600 ~/.ssh/config, but that didn't help. What I've tried doing:

Jordan@EarlzWindows8VM ~/dev/NonExceptional
$ chmod 0600 ~/.ssh/config 

Jordan@EarlzWindows8VM ~/dev/NonExceptional
$ stat ~/.ssh/config 
  File: `/home/Jordan/.ssh/config'
  Size: 47              Blocks: 1          IO Block: 65536  regular file
Device: 4ade2efdh/1256075005d   Inode: 1970324837237461  Links: 1
Access: (0660/-rw-rw----)  Uid: ( 1001/  Jordan)   Gid: (  513/    None)
Access: 2013-01-12 22:53:32.483072600 -0500
Modify: 2013-01-12 22:53:32.486074700 -0500
Change: 2013-01-12 23:27:33.077476800 -0500
 Birth: 2013-01-12 22:53:32.483072600 -0500

Notice that for whatever reason, the permissions still appear to be 0660. I don't understand why though. I've verified these permissions in Windows Explorer. Only I have access to the file, and when checking the "effective access", the group Users does not have access to the file.

How do I fix this error?

Also, some background: Windows 8 Enterprise. Joined to a domain(which always makes permissions fun). Cygwin is up to date

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Does it make a difference to move the config file to config-old and then create a new config file with the right permissions? –  Heptite Jan 13 '13 at 4:58
@Heptite no it doesn;t –  Earlz Jan 13 '13 at 16:07

4 Answers 4

Iv'e found that this always fixes it:

chown Username:Users ~/.ssh/config
chmod go-rw ~/.ssh/config
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This solution worked for me with the same issue. –  firefusion Apr 8 '13 at 14:25
up vote 3 down vote accepted

The problem ended up being that the file was owned by group "None". I changed the group to "Users" and then I could freely change the permissions

I figured this out from this related question

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This solution helped me:

cd ~/.ssh
chmod 600 *
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Your configuration file is writable for the group, and SSH doesn't like that. Do a

chmod go-rw ~/.ssh/config

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The question shows that he tried that, and the mode did not change. –  Heptite Jan 15 '13 at 19:11

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