OpenSSH and network drives on Windows

I'm using OpenSSH 3.x on all servers both Windows and Linux / Unix and Macs as well to remotely access files and services. With OpenSSH for Windows I faced with the following error: C:unixConsole2>ssh servername.hu -l balint @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ @ WARNING: UNPROTECTED PRIVATE KEY FILE! @ @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Permissions 0644 for '/cygdrive/x/.ssh/id_rsa' are too open. It is recommended that your private key files are NOT accessible by others. This private key will be ignored. bad permissions: ignore key: /cygdrive/x/.ssh/id_rsa Enter passphrase for key '/cygdrive/x/.ssh/id_rsa': This is of course not the way it should be - it should normaly authenticate with the keyfiles; however on Windows we don't have chmod to change the permissions. It turned out, that NT rights are not successfuly loaded with Cygwin, if your files are on a network drive - and X: is a remote server for me. So - instead of running unnecessary circles: we can change the CYGDRIVE and the CYGPATH variables (even temporarily) to check our .ssh folder on a local path: set CYGDRIVE=c: set CYGPATH=unix copy x:.shh c:unix.shh And voila: C:unixConsole2>ssh servername.hu -l balint Last login: Mon Mar 19 17:11:58 2007 from xx.xx.xx.140 [balint@servername.hu ~]$