GitLab does not work with key loaded in Pageant?
<p>I keep most of my personal projects on <a href="https://bitbucket.org/" rel="nofollow">BitBucket</a> by Atlassian. As a natural choice, I use <a href="https://www.sourcetreeapp.com/" rel="nofollow">SourceTree</a> app (their product) as git GUI client on Windows, and I'm happy with it. For projects where <code>ssh</code> git is available, I prefer <code>ssh</code> over <code>https</code>. SourceTree plays very well with projects hosted on BitBucket. Although it offers both of ssh agents: OpenSSH or PuTTY, its default selection is PuTTY/Plink (perhaps because PuTTY is more Windows-familiar).</p>

<p>Recently my establishment requested to host some projects on its own server. At first look it's a git server using GitLab opensource. I can use SourceTree with project hosted here using <code>https</code> just fine, however when it comes to <code>ssh</code>, the only choice of SSH agent is OpenSSH. The only key pair it would use (unless specified in config) is <code>~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub</code> and <code>~/.ssh/id_rsa</code> (located in <code>%USERPROFILE%\.ssh\</code></p>

<p>I've tried to:</p>

<ul>
<li>Load <code>~/.ssh/id_rsa</code> into PuTTY Key Generator</li>
<li>Convert it to PuTTY format (<code>.ppk</code>) file</li>
<li>Load the <code>.ppk</code> into Pageant (PuTTY authentication agent).</li>
</ul>

<p>Despite the key being loaded and kept in the memory by Pageant, the connection with the server failed all the time, e.g. <code>git: fatal: Could not read from remote repository</code>. The only way to make it work is to start <code>ssh-agent</code> and <code>ssh-add</code> (go with OpenSSH).</p>

<p>Since I have Pageant running usually in the background, I find it more convenient to use (e.g. the keyphrase to open the private key is long/complex, and I don't remember it, and it can be copy-pasted from KeePass, while in the case of OpenSSH, <code>cmd</code> console does not allow me to paste it, too bad).</p>

<p>Is there anyway to make the ssh authentication to GitLab done via PuTTY instead of OpenSSH?</p>