- Don't type or run anything until I told you so.
- This guide uses linux commands. For windows users, you can use
win-bash
I have one computer and two different github accounts. One is for work, the other is for my personal stuff. I can't use the same ssh key twice, so I have to use different ssh key for each of my accounts. How do I do that? How do I switch between these ssh keys?
Open your terminal / CMD PROMPT and type the following command:
ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "your_email@example.com"
The command will ask ssh to generate a key for you. After running the command, you will see the following feedback:
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
The next line you will see would be:
Enter file in which to save the key (/Users/sprlwrks/.ssh/id_rsa):
Here, you can specify a directory and filename for the ssh key that will be generated. The default is /Users/sprlwrks/.ssh/id_rsa. It will be saved in /Users/sprlwrks/.ssh/ with the file name id_rsa.
It will generate two files. id_rsa and id_rsa.pub. The id_rsa.pub contains your public key which you will use, you can give this to your team leader or to other people that you want. The id_rsa is the private key, don't want to give this key to anyone.
In this case, since we are going to generate two ssh keys, we don't want to keep the default file name, set it to whatever name you want by giving it /Users/sprlwrks/.ssh/file_name. I named mine id_rsa_personal.
The next line you will see would be:
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
If you type a passphrase here, you will have to remember that and type the same passphrase again everytime you use this key. I'll leave it up to you to decide. For me, I did not add any passphrase so I simply pressed enter. The next line would ask you to retype the passphrase again, of course if you left it empty then just press enter.
With all that you should have gotten something that looks like this:
aprilmintacpineda-MacBook-Pro:PWA-W88 aprilmintacpineda$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "me@example.com"
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/Users/sprlwrks/.ssh/id_rsa): /Users/sprlwrks/.ssh/id_rsa_personal
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in /Users/sprlwrks/.ssh/id_rsa_personal.
Your public key has been saved in /Users/sprlwrks/.ssh/id_rsa_personal.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
0b:0a:9f:58:2d:c8:a3:87:f7:44:17:f6:2c:d8:b7:3a me@example.com
The key's randomart image is:
+--[ RSA 4096]----+
| |
| |
| o |
| . . = + |
| = = * S |
| o B = + o |
|o + = o |
| o o E. |
| . .. |
+-----------------+
That's your first key. Now run cd ~/.ssh and then run ls. ls would list all files in the directory. You should see the keys that have been generated.
id_rsa_personal id_rsa_personal.pub
Now try to generate another one by following the same procedure again. I named my second key id_rsa_work. Once you're done you should have the following files (respective to the filename you gave it):
id_rsa_personal id_rsa_personal.pub id_rsa_work id_rsa_work.pub
First, I'll add my id_rsa_personal ssh key.
Go to your github account then go to settings -> SSH and GPG keys. Click on New SSH key button.
Go to your terminal again and run this command: cat ~/.ssh/<yourfilename>.pub replacing <yourfilename> with whatever file name you gave it, in this case mine is id_rsa_personal.pub.
After running the commands above, you'll see something like this:
ssh-rsa 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 me@example.com
Copy paste that to the key on your new ssh key form then give it whatever title you like. I gave mine macbook.
Done! Now you have added your first ssh key to your github account, now add the other one to another github account or to the same github account giving it a different title so you can differentiate between the two.
On your terminal / CMD PROMPT, run this command: touch ~/.ssh/config this will create a file with the file name of config on the ~/.ssh folder. Now Go to that folder and open that file with your text editor of choice.
Copy paste the following on it:
Host gh_work
HostName github.com
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_personal
The Host is how you would referrence this credentials on your terminal. The HostName is whatever platform you use, in this case github.com. The IdentityFile is the ssh key to be used for this credential.
Now add another one. By the end you should have something like these:
Host gh_work
HostName github.com
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_work
Host gh_personal
HostName github.com
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_personal
On your terminal / CMD PROMPT, run ssh -T git@<myHost> replacing myHost with the host you wrote on the config file. Mine is ssh -T git@id_rsa_personal.
After running that command, you should see something like this: Hi <username>! You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not provide shell access.. Now you know it's working. Go ahead and test the other key you added.
For this example I will clone this repository: https://github.com/aprilmintacpineda/chat-with-people-backend. To test if yours keys work, you should your own test repository.
Run git clone git@<myHost>:aprilmintacpineda/chat-with-people-backend.git. Replacing myHost with the Host you want that was specified on your config. Ones it's done, you can run git remote -v and you'll see something like this:
origin git@gh_personal:aprilmintacpineda/chat-with-people-backend.git (fetch)
origin git@gh_personal:aprilmintacpineda/chat-with-people-backend.git (push)
You see now that it would use my gh_personal keys everytime. Now make changes and commit and push the changes. If all worked well you should get no errors.
Note that if you already have an existing clone in your machine, you can do this:
git remote add origin git@<myHost>:aprilmintacpineda/chat-with-people-backend.git
then simply push to that remote.
Now you're all set, you can test the other key too!
- https://help.github.com/articles/connecting-to-github-with-ssh/
- https://help.github.com/articles/generating-a-new-ssh-key-and-adding-it-to-the-ssh-agent/
- Point out mistakes (even grammatical mistakes).
- Suggest edits.
- Did I missed something?
- Experiencing an error?
Created with <3 by April Mintac Pineda
I spent an entire day trying to accomplish having multiple accounts on my machine and this is the only guide that managed to make it work!
THANK YOU!