Git clone: Could not create Directory

Just ran into this issue and wanted to post the solution.

When using a CYGWIN version of SSH you need to create an environment variable called HOME. If you create HOME as a System variable and set it to %USERPROFILE%, and cmd/bash gets launched as system (elevated), your %HOME% path will be C:\Windows\System32.

An easy fix is to hardcode your userprofile path C:\Users\username to the HOME system variable, however if you have multiple users you will need to create environment variables accordingly.

I was not implicitly launching cmd as SYSTEM however I was having this problem and not sure why. Safest option would be to only have a user environment variable called %USERPROFILE% and to not use an elevated command prompt.

If you're having this issue then run ECHO %HOME% and you'll see what the variable is being read as (or if it exists).

I was using SSH to clone a git repo with Windows; however in PowerShell.

$configStoreGitDir = "$GitBaseDir\.git" if (!(Test-Path -Path $configStoreGitDir -PathType Container)) { Write-Verbose "Unable to locate local git folder at $GitBaseDir - recreating and cloning" New-Item -Type Directory $GitBaseDir git clone $GIT_REPO $GitBaseDir } 

When I was trying to clone a repo as a user I was getting the same .ssh directory error:

Cloning into 'C:\Git\test-environments'... Could not create directory '/c/Windows/system32/.ssh'. 

Instead of hardcoding the path, I set the Powershell environment variable $env:USERPROFILE to use HOME just like @akevit mentioned in his answer.

$env:HOME = $env:USERPROFILE $configStoreGitDir = "$GitBaseDir\.git" if (!(Test-Path -Path $configStoreGitDir -PathType Container)) { Write-Verbose "Unable to locate local git folder at $GitBaseDir - recreating and cloning" New-Item -Type Directory $GitBaseDir git clone $GIT_REPO $GitBaseDir } 

Now it works and uses the known_hosts and id_rsa private key in the users $env:USERPROFILE\.ssh\ directory.

Cloning into 'C:\Git\test-environments'... remote: Counting objects: 460, done. remote: Compressing objects: 100% (457/457), done. 

This was with the latest Windows 64bit git install:

git --version git version 2.6.3.windows.1 

Just add HOME variable with C:\Users\username value under User Variables

Click here to see sample image