PuTTY bug unix-add-host-ca-fails

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summary: Unix: unable to add new SSH host certification authority record on fresh installation
class: bug: This is clearly an actual problem we want fixed.
difficulty: fun: Just needs tuits, and not many of them.
priority: high: This should be fixed in the next release.
present-in: 0.78 0.83
fixed-in: 4448d1a81e934b8f697d8e7bcc66219e38924259

Ever since SSH host certificate support was added in 0.78, attempting to add a new trusted host certification authority record in the Unix version on a clean installation would fail: on hitting the 'Save' button in the 'Configure host CAs' dialogue would give a message like "Unable to open file '/home/[user]/.putty/sshhostcas/[name]'".

There was no code to create the directory ~/.putty/sshhostcas if it didn't already exist (which it almost certainly didn't).

A workaround if using a version of PuTTY without this fix is to create the directory by hand before attempting to add the first host CA record: 

mkdir ~/.putty/sshhostcas

(This problem only affects the Unix version of PuTTY; it does not affect the Windows version.)

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Audit trail for this bug.
(last revision of this bug record was at 2026-01-23 23:59:09 +0000)