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On Windows GIT_SSH environment variable not respected

Dominic P

After a recent update, SSH with SourceTree broke on me.

On my private repos I only allow modern, secure SSH ciphers. This used to work fine, but now I get a "No matching cipher found" error anytime I try to fetch or push. It looks like the official Windows Git comes bundled with an old or crippled OpenSSH client that doesn't support modern ciphers.

For command line usage, I was able to work around this by setting the GIT_SSH variable to point to my Cygwin SSH client. But, SourceTree doesn't seem to respect this setting and still tries to use the bundled SSH client.

Any ideas on how I can work around this?

Accepted answers

Dominic P

Someone on GitHub found a work around for this!

It turns out there is a hard-coded cipher list in Program Files\Git\etc\ssh\ssh_config. All you have to do is comment that line and everything works again.

I still don't know how it was working before the update, but at least it's working now. We can go ahead and close this.

All comments

Mike Corsaro

Hello! Could you make sure your PATH environment variable is set to the location of your SSH agent? Sourcetree uses that setting to find the SSH agent to use.

Dominic P

Hi Mike, thanks for the helpful response. I tweaked the PATH variable so the Cygwin bin directory came before the Git directory, but unfortunately, even after a restart, I'm seeing the same behavior from SourceTree.

From Windows cmd, I can type in: `ssh git@myserver.com` and connect with no problem. So, the environment variables are correct.

You mentioned the SSH agent. I don't think this is an issue with the agent so much as the SSH binary itself. I'm not sure what ssh client SourceTree is trying to use, but it doesn't support modern ciphers like chacha20-poly1305@openssh.com or aes256-gcm@openssh.com

Mike Corsaro

Are you using Embedded Git, or System Git? And are you using OpenSSH, or Putty? Additionally, I would try replacing "ssh-agent.exe" in the current git install with your new one.

Dominic P

Hi Mike, I've tried it with both embedded and system Git, and I get the same results with both. I'm using OpenSSH not Putty.

I replaced the ssh-agent.exe in the Git install, and nothing changed. Then, I tried replacing the ssh.exe in the Git install and I got a new error about cygwin heap mismatch. So, I have at least confirmed that SoureTree is using the ssh binary included in the Git install and not the one that comes first in the PATH environment variable.

It would be nice if SourceTree respected the GIT_SSH environment variable because I could just point it to the binary I want to use without messing with my PATH. In my case, I actually need the Git bin to come before my cygwin bin for interoperability with other apps (namely npm which has some kind of vendetta against cygwin).

Dominic P

Someone on GitHub found a work around for this!

It turns out there is a hard-coded cipher list in Program Files\Git\etc\ssh\ssh_config. All you have to do is comment that line and everything works again.

I still don't know how it was working before the update, but at least it's working now. We can go ahead and close this.

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