Git says "Warning: Permanently added to the list of known hosts"

Every time I use git to interact with a remote, such as when pulling or pushing, I am shown the following message:

Warning: Permanently added '...' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.

How can I prevent this annoying message from displaying? It is only an annoyance—everything functions properly.

Solution 1:

Solution: create a ~/.ssh/config file and insert the line:

UserKnownHostsFile ~/.ssh/known_hosts

You will then see the message the next time you access Github, but after that you'll not see it anymore because the host is added to the known_hosts file. This fixes the issue, rather than just hiding the log message.

This problem was bugging me for quite some time. The problem occurs because the OpenSSH client compiled for Windows doesn't check the known_hosts file in ~/.ssh/known_hosts

ssh -vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv [email protected]

debug3: check_host_in_hostfile: filename /dev/null
debug3: check_host_in_hostfile: filename /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts
debug3: check_host_in_hostfile: filename /dev/null
debug3: check_host_in_hostfile: filename /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts
Warning: Permanently added 'github.com,207.97.227.239' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.

Solution 2:

Add the following line to your ssh config file ($HOME/.ssh/config):

LogLevel=quiet

If running ssh from the command line add the following option to the command string:

-o LogLevel=quiet

For example, the following prints out the gcc version installed on machine.example.org (and no warning):

ssh -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null \
    -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no \
    -o LogLevel=quiet \
    -i identity_file \
    machine.example.org \
    gcc -dumpversion

Solution 3:

Set LogLevel to ERROR (not QUIET) in ~/.ssh/config file to avoid seeing these errors:

Host *
   StrictHostKeyChecking no
   UserKnownHostsFile /dev/null
   LogLevel ERROR

Solution 4:

That message is from SSH, which is warning you that you are connecting to a host which you've never connected to before. I wouldn't recommend turning it off, since it would mean that you might miss a warning about a host key changing, which can indicate a MITM attack on your SSH session.