Fix "Permission denied (publickey)" error when pushing with Git

publickey-git-error.markdown

"Help, I keep getting a 'Permission Denied (publickey)' error when I push!"

This means, on your local machine, you haven't made any SSH keys. Not to worry. Here's how to fix:

1. Open git bash (Use the Windows search. To find it, type "git bash") or the Mac Terminal. Pro Tip: You can use any *nix based command prompt (but not the default Windows Command Prompt!)
2. Type cd ~/.ssh. This will take you to the root directory for Git (Likely C:\Users\[YOUR-USER-NAME]\.ssh\ on Windows)
3. Within the .ssh folder, there should be these two files: id_rsa and id_rsa.pub. These are the files that tell your computer how to communicate with GitHub, BitBucket, or any other Git based service. Type ls to see a directory listing. If those two files don't show up, proceed to the next step. NOTE: Your SSH keys must be named id_rsa and id_rsa.pub in order for Git, GitHub, and BitBucket to recognize them by default.
4. To create the SSH keys, type ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "your_email@example.com". This will create both id_rsa and id_rsa.pub files.
5. Now, go and open id_rsa.pub in your favorite text editor (you can do this via Windows Explorer or the OSX Finder if you like, typing open . will open the folder).
6. Copy the contents--exactly as it appears, with no extra spaces or lines--of id_rsa.pub and paste it into GitHub and/or BitBucket under the Account Settings > SSH Keys. NOTE: I like to give the SSH key a descriptive name, usually with the name of the workstation I'm on along with the date.
7. Now that you've added your public key to Github and/or BitBucket, try to git push again and see if it works. It should!

More help available from GitHub on creating SSH Keys and BitBucket Help.

Thanks. Worked for me.

Excellent man. Thank you so much. It worked.

Thanks! Worked for me

I've tried practically everything on this page on my Mac and I'm still getting the same error message. Do I make the SSH key for the result of 1.) whoami, 2.) my github username, or 3.) my email address? I've tried all 3 with the same result....
UPDATE: Finally found the answer here -> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10116373/git-push-error-repository-not-found
Had to remove the origin and re-add with "git remote add origin https://USERNAME:PASSWORD@github.com/username/reponame.git"

thanks @ChannelJuanNews

Saved my life!!!

Thanks man, saved my life <3

For me Windows did not know what ~ was even after setting HOME environment variable did not help.

Only after setting ~ environment variable to the right path (C:\Users{username}) did it work.

Thanks for the solution, also we need to check the "allow write access" check box after adding the ssh key

Host github.com
HostName github.com
User git
IdentityFile /Users/myusername/.ssh/my_github_ssh_private_key_registered_on_github

This solution works fine on MacOSX. Just put the content below in the /etc/ssh/ssh_config and run this : source ~/.zshrc or source ~/.bashrc.

Thanks to @shravanchk

THX

thanks

you may have test by ssh key, try Https

thanks!

Complete rubbish.
Waste of time.

Worked for me. Many thanks!

Thanks!!!! It worked!

worked for me at first attempt...thank you !

Thanks! Worked for me

thanks alot, we lazy programmers had problem with this shit and never actualy learnt how to solve it. i'pin this shit to browser :)

Omg! thank you!! I forked a repo and needed to fetch from the original repo to mine, and I got this message

git@github.com: Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

This post helped me! 🙏🏽

Thank you sm this helped me out a lot!

Thanks! it worked perfectly for me 👍

Thank you :)

Many thanks!!!!

finally!!! you saved me hours. thanks man 😃😃😃

In my case I have created ssh key in root user mode.
I deleted all keys and created new without sudo and worked for me

none of the above worked for me. but then I tried the following:
$ eval ssh-agent -s
$ ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa
and it worked!

Thanks this worked for me

You might have to create a config file (yeap, extension-less) under ~/.ssh/config with the following contents

Host bitbucket.org
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_your_bitbucket_private_key

That immediately solved my problem!

The ssh was working fine with github but when i used it over gitbash without ssh-agent it stopped working completely even with ssh-agent.
when I added the config file above it worked again. Thanks

Thanks @renatoargh

You might have to create a config file (yeap, extension-less) under ~/.ssh/config with the following contents

Host bitbucket.org
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_your_bitbucket_private_key

Of course I modified it for Github:

Host github.com
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_github.com

This is what worked for me after I moved to a new laptop with Windows 10 (202H). I assume its because ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 is used for another service and I did not have the "id_ed25519.pub" key on Github.com. So adding the config tells Git what SSH private key to use for verification when connecting to Github.com.