Trouble authenticating with git for windows

Question

I was using Bitbucket successfully with SmartGit, but after they changed their licensing requirements I tried to change to git for windows.  I installed git for windows and then checked that OpenSSH was successfully installed by running

ssh -V

getting

OpenSSH_9.2p1, OpenSSL 1.1.1t  7 Feb 2023

Then I started the ssh-agent with

eval $(ssh-agent)

and got

Agent pid 629

Then I tried adding my existing SSH key to the agent with

ssh-add ~/my_key_name

but that didn’t work, so I generated a new key with

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -b 4096 -C "{username@emaildomain.com}" -f {ssh-key-name}

and then added the public key to my Bitbucket account.  I added the key to the agent with

ssh-add ~/my_new_key_name

which resulted in

Identity added: /c/Users/me/my_new_key_name (myaddress@email.com)

I ran

ssh -T git@bitbucket.org

to confirm that the SSH key was successfully added, getting

authenticated via ssh key.

You can use git to connect to Bitbucket. Shell access is disabled

But when I then run git pull or git fetch I get

git@bitbucket.org: Permission denied (publickey).

fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights

and the repository exists.

If I run

ssh -T git@bitbucket.org

again I’m refused, getting

git@bitbucket.org: Permission denied (publickey).

I’ve run out of ideas, please help.

Erez Maadani · Accepted Answer

Hey @Gabor L

Here is a link that help troubleshooting: https://confluence.atlassian.com/bbkb/permission-denied-publickey-302811860.html

If the link doesn't help, try checking your remote url using: "git remote -v". It should be aligned with one of the formats from this link: https://support.atlassian.com/bitbucket-cloud/docs/change-the-remote-url-to-your-repository/. Do try both formats.

Gabor L · Accepted Answer

I ended up solving this by doing the following:

I generated a new key named id_rsa, not something custom like I had been doing

I added the key with

ssh-add ~/{ssh-key-name}

but then the key step was adding a config file (~/.ssh/config) since there had been none telling Bitbucket which key to use, i.e.

Host bitbucket.org

AddKeysToAgent yes

IdentityFile ~/.ssh/{ssh-key-name}

Of course these directions are listed plain as day here

https://support.atlassian.com/bitbucket-cloud/docs/set-up-personal-ssh-keys-on-windows/

but since my previous key had been working and there was no config file I didn’t think that was the problem.  It was.