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Ssh Keys

SSH Keys

There are a few ways to authenticate with GitHub. Essentially you would need this so that you could push your local changes from your laptop to your GitHub repository.

You could use one of the following methods:

  • HTTPS: Essentially, this would require your GitHub username and password each time you try to push your changes
  • SSH: With SSH, you could generate an SSH Key pair and add your public key to GitHub. That way, you would not be asked for your username and password every time you push your changes to GitHub.

Git And GitHub Login

One thing that you need to keep in mind is that the GitHub repository URL is different depending on whether you are using SSH or HTTPS:

  • HTTPS: https://github.com/bobbyiliev/demo-repo.git
  • SSH: git@github.com:bobbyiliev/demo-repo.git

Note that when you choose SSH, the https:// part is changed with git@, and you have : after github.com rather than /. This is important as this defines how you would like to authenticate each time.

Generating SSH Keys

To generate a new SSH key pair in case that you don’t have one, you can run the following command:

Terminal window
ssh-keygen

For security reasons you can specify a passphrase, which essentially is the password for your private SSH key.

The above would generate 2 files:

  • 1 private SSH key and 1 public SSH key. The private key should always be stored safely on your laptop, and you should not share it with anyone.
  • 1 public SSH key, which you need to upload to GitHub.

The two files will be automatically generated at the following folder:

~/.ssh

You can use the cd command to access the folder:

Terminal window
cd ~/.ssh

Then with ls you can check the content:

Terminal window
ls

Output:

id_rsa  id_rsa.pub

The id_rsa is your private key, and again you should not share it with anyone.

The id_rsa.pub is the public key that would need to be uploaded to GitHub.

Adding the public SSH key to GitHub

Once you’ve created your SSH keys, you need to upload the public SSH key to your GitHub account. To do so, you first need to get the content of the file.

To get the content of the file, you can use the cat command:

Terminal window
cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

The output will look like this:

ssh-rsa AAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQAB...... your_user@your_host

Copy the whole thing and then visit GitHub and follow these steps:

  • Click on your profile picture on the right top

  • Then click on settings

GitHub Settings

  • On the left, click on SSH and GPG Keys:

SSH Keys

  • After that, click on the New SSH Key button

  • Then specify a title of the SSH key, it should be something descriptive, for example: Work Laptop SSH Key. And in the Key area, paste your public SSH key:

SSH Key GitHub

  • Finally click the Add SSH Key button at the bottom of the page

Conclusion

With that, you now have your SSH Keys generated and added to GitHub. That way, you will be able to push your changes without having to type your GitHub password and user each time.

For more information about SSH keys, make sure to check this tutorial here.