ssh-keygen' is not recognized as an internal or external command

pal4life picture pal4life · Apr 13, 2012 · Viewed 100.6k times · Source

I am trying to add ssh keys for usage on github but on my xp on command prompt ssh-keygen does not work. It gives me the following error

ssh-keygen' is not recognized as an internal or external command.

Is there an alternative for generating keys on xp?

Answer

kini picture kini · Apr 14, 2012

Are you running msysgit, or some other form of Windows git installation? msysgit is only one possible way to run git on Windows but it's probably also the simplest one. It's also the way recommended by the git website at http://git-scm.org/ .

If you are using msysgit, then you need to run the command in Git Bash, not in a standard Windows command line prompt. Git Bash is a prompt that is installed for you by msysgit, and is basically the most common Linux command line shell (bash) packaged for Windows to facilitate command line usage of git. msysgit should also install the ssh-keygen program in a place where it is accessible from Git Bash, but not necessarily from your usual Windows command line prompt.