Multiple SSH keys for different github accounts

multiple_ssh_setting.md

Multiple SSH Keys settings for different github account

create different public key

create different ssh key according the article Mac Set-Up Git

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "your_email@youremail.com"

Please refer to github ssh issues for common problems.

for example, 2 keys created at:

~/.ssh/id_rsa_activehacker
~/.ssh/id_rsa_jexchan

then, add these two keys as following

$ ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa_activehacker
$ ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa_jexchan

you can delete all cached keys before

$ ssh-add -D

finally, you can check your saved keys

$ ssh-add -l

Modify the ssh config

$ cd ~/.ssh/
$ touch config
$ subl -a config

Then added

#activehacker account
Host github.com-activehacker
	HostName github.com
	User git
	IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_activehacker

#jexchan account
Host github.com-jexchan
	HostName github.com
	User git
	IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_jexchan

Clone you repo and modify your Git config

clone your repo git clone git@github.com:activehacker/gfs.git gfs_jexchan

cd gfs_jexchan and modify git config

$ git config user.name "jexchan"
$ git config user.email "jexchan@gmail.com" 

$ git config user.name "activehacker"
$ git config user.email "jexlab@gmail.com" 

or you can have global git config $ git config --global user.name "jexchan" $ git config --global user.email "jexchan@gmail.com"

then use normal flow to push your code

$ git add .
$ git commit -m "your comments"
$ git push

Another related article in Chinese

1. http://4simple.github.com/docs/multipleSSHkeys/

After digging for a while here's the issue I found and the fix:

This is the config file for ssh located @ ~/.ssh/config

#BitBucket Account
Host bb_work
	HostName bitbucket.org
	User git
	IdentityFile ~/.ssh/bb_work

#Personal account
Host gh_personal
	HostName github.com
	User git
	IdentityFile ~/.ssh/gh_personal

And this is the config file for the remote repo:

[remote "origin"]
      url = gh_personal:abhisri1997/mailer.git
      fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

You can notice that I have changed my remote repo URL from: git@github.com:abhisri1997/mailer.git to gh_personal:abhisri1997/mailer.git

How this works:

You'd like to establish an ssh connection to the GitHub server to read/write the data to your repo for that you have created the key by reading the above article.

Now whenever you do a git pull/push or whenever you want to establish a connection to GitHub using the git command

It will check your ssh config file to check if the host is defined with git@github.com but it will find nothing.

So it won't be able to shake the earlier created private and public keys.

So in order to do that we have to change our repo URL("git@github.com:abhisri1997/mailer.git ") to the HOST value (gh_personal) set in ~/.ssh/config

After digging for a while here's the issue I found and the fix:

This is the config file for ssh located @ ~/.ssh/config

#BitBucket Account
Host bb_work
	HostName bitbucket.org
	User git
	IdentityFile ~/.ssh/bb_work

#Personal account
Host gh_personal
	HostName github.com
	User git
	IdentityFile ~/.ssh/gh_personal

And this is the config file for the remote repo:

[remote "origin"]
      url = gh_personal:abhisri1997/mailer.git
      fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

You can notice that I have changed my remote repo URL from: git@github.com:abhisri1997/mailer.git to gh_personal:abhisri1997/mailer.git

How this works:

You'd like to establish an ssh connection to the GitHub server to read/write the data to your repo for that you have created the key by reading the above article.

Now whenever you do a git pull/push or whenever you want to establish a connection to GitHub using the git command

It will check your ssh config file to check if the host is defined with git@github.com but it will find nothing.

So it won't be able to shake the earlier created private and public keys.

So in order to do that we have to change our repo URL("git@github.com:abhisri1997/mailer.git ") to the HOST value (gh_personal) set in ~/.ssh/config

Hey I followed this instruction but I still get ssh: Could not resolve hostname github.com-work: nodename nor servname provided, or not known
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

I already added my public key to github too

After digging for a while here's the issue I found and the fix:
This is the config file for ssh located @ ~/.ssh/config

#BitBucket Account
Host bb_work
	HostName bitbucket.org
	User git
	IdentityFile ~/.ssh/bb_work

#Personal account
Host gh_personal
	HostName github.com
	User git
	IdentityFile ~/.ssh/gh_personal

And this is the config file for the remote repo:

[remote "origin"]
      url = gh_personal:abhisri1997/mailer.git
      fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

You can notice that I have changed my remote repo URL from: git@github.com:abhisri1997/mailer.git to gh_personal:abhisri1997/mailer.git
How this works:
You'd like to establish an ssh connection to the GitHub server to read/write the data to your repo for that you have created the key by reading the above article.
Now whenever you do a git pull/push or whenever you want to establish a connection to GitHub using the git command
It will check your ssh config file to check if the host is defined with git@github.com but it will find nothing.
So it won't be able to shake the earlier created private and public keys.
So in order to do that we have to change our repo URL("git@github.com:abhisri1997/mailer.git ") to the HOST value (gh_personal) set in ~/.ssh/config

Hey I followed this instruction but I still get ssh: Could not resolve hostname github.com-work: nodename nor servname provided, or not known fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

I already added my public key to github too

Your repo name should be changed from
git@github.com:abhisri1997/mailer.git
this to
this - gh_personal:abhisri1997/mailer.git

From the error you get I can still see github.com-work:

Change this to your ssh host

munging your .git/config remote is just going to end up being a hassle in the long run.

trust me, been there done that, never doing it again tomorrow.

the. most. portable. way is to setup your root gitconfig so that it uses the includeif.

edit: like mentioned here:
https://gist.github.com/jexchan/2351996?permalink_comment_id=4456452#gistcomment-4456452

---

The includeif stanza/directive modifies your git config on the fly based on the CWD of the git operation.
Relevant to this thread, this is where we can teach git about the ssh_command, which is where you point to your shiny unique ssh key.

The end result is a set of dotfiles ~/.gitconfig, ~/.dotfiles/this.gitconfig, ~/.dotfiles/that.gitconfig you can carry around and a directory structure for your ~/Projects

~/.gitconfig

[core]
	editor = DISPLAY=:1 code --wait

[init]
	defaultBranch = master

[rerere]
	enabled = true

[includeIf "gitdir:Projects/Mine/Gitlab/"]
        path = ~/.dotfiles/mine-gitlab.gitconfig

[includeIf "gitdir:Projects/Mine/Github/"]
        path = ~/.dotfiles/mine-github.gitconfig

[includeIf "gitdir:Projects/Experiements/Github/"]
        path = ~/.dotfiles/mine-github.gitconfig

[includeIf "gitdir:Projects/Work/Github/SomeCompany"]
        path = ~/.dotfiles/work-somecompany.gitconfig

Personal Configs

~/.dotfiles/mine-gitlab.gitconfig

[user]
name = My Name
email = other.e@ma.il

~/.dotfiles/mine-github.gitconfig

[user]
name = My Name
email = mygithubusername@users.noreply.github'com
signingkey = DEADBEEF

[commit]
gpgsign = true

[gpg]
program = age

For the above, any git operations occurring within a path that matches either:

• Projects/Mine/Gitlab/
• Projects/Mine/GitHub/, or
• Projects/Experiements/Github/

will use my github config.

Work Configs

~/.dotfiles/work-github-somecompany.gitconfig

[core]
sshCommand = "ssh -o IdentitiesOnly -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa-mymachinename-github-somecompany -F /dev/null"

For the above, any git operation occuring in a directory that matches Projects/Work/Github/SomeCompany will specifically use a different ssh key despite my ~/.ssh/config declaring another for other general github ssh connections. The -o IdentitiesOnly tells ssh to use only the private key specified with the "-i" option and ignore any other keys in the SSH agent or on the remote server.

---

The main reasons I love this setup :

can just copy paste a github git repo url with wild abandon and paste it without having to remember the magical things to modify.

don't have to do anything in the ~/.ssh/config since what we really wanted this for was git and nothing else.

You can use this https://github.com/adminka-root/git_switcher

Boss, can you develop a GUI software if you are free? It's like switchHost. It's convenient.

Boss, can you develop a GUI software if you are free? It's like switchHost. It's convenient.

I needed to switch between accounts as part of a training session for children to show how development works in a team. I wrote a quick solution that I don't use in my daily life. I agree that it would be nicer with a GUI and a tray icon. But I'm busy enough to do it. I can recommend Glade and Vala or PyGTK, which will allow you to quickly create a modern interface on gtk. You could develop the interface yourself, and my source code would probably speed up the process.

On Macbook, it works

Host github.com
HostName github.com
User your_user_account_github
PreferredAuthentications publickey
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/your_user_account_github_rsa
IdentitiesOnly yes

sshCommand

Good catch! Defining the sshCommand is not described in most of the guides I've seen.

In case you have for instance two separate Github accounts and two separate projects (project A and project B) you'd like to have two separate ssh-keys for:

1. Open an A project's .git/config file
2. Add

  [core]
     ...
    sshCommand = ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_first_key

3. Do the same for your project B with ~/.ssh/id_second_key

This was the best solution for me! Thanks!

Formerly, I enjoyed the simplicity of SSH config way of doing this. I have changed my mind because I ran into a project with submodules. Projects like this have hard-coded committed references to URLs. I cannot simply use personal.github.com vs work.github.com with such projects without modifying the .gitmodules. I even tried that and git seems to have become confused.

Therefore the IncludeIf approach might actually be most compatible with the most projects. Although it is not exactly Windows friendly. Definitely Linux-friendly!

@mbean-epc Could you elaborate?

I use two SSH keys in parallel for a project with submodules without problem. The location of the repo(s) provided in .gitmodules has nothing to do with how you access them while working with them. The only thing you may have run into that I can think of is that your git config may need minor manual adaptation after initialising the project.

@keikoro Did you set your configurations before you clone the repository that had submodules? I think I tried both before and after. One seemed to work. The other did not. This is what I mean by "git seems to have become confused".

If you cannot replicate using those steps, please do let me know. I should definitely retry if it is working for you.

My setup: the projects in.gitmodules are also work projects. Ideally I would just update each and then be back to coding again.

@mbean-epc Your system doesn't know which SSH key you want it to use for a specific project, so it'll default to whatever it thinks is your default key, unless the remote URLs for your repos contain an alias it can match to a different config.

So, if you initially clone a repo without providing the alternative host name you use in your SSH config, you'll have to manually change the remote URL after. The same is true for any submodules – which are regular repos, except their config is saved in the .git folder of the superproject which contains them.

If you can initialise the project fine, i.e. there's no issue with permissions which would prevent you from cloning/fetching with your default user, you'll have to then go through all config files in the uppermost .git directory and adapt the remote URLs to fetch from/push to. The config for the superproject is in the usual path, .git/config, the config files for the submodules are in .git/modules/SUBMODULE_NAME/config, where SUBMODULE_NAME matches the section header in the .gitmodules file, e.g.

[submodule "SUBMODULE_NAME"]
	path = ...
	url = ...
	branch = ...
	...

In your config files, you'll have to find your remote and adapt its url value from the default...

[remote "my_remote"]
	url = git@github.com:my_org/my_repo.git

... to whatever you use in your SSH config:

[remote "my_remote"]
	url = git@my-ssh-alias:my_org/my_repo.git

@keikoro thank you for providing that. Again, that he gets to the point where things are just a bit too messy for me and unintuitive for a given repo. So at that point the IncludeIf seems like the approach I would tell everyone else to use if they are just now starting out.

@mbean-epc the easiest is just to start another ssh-agent, pull the ssh key of that repo into that agent, and do all the git operations in the same terminal of that agent. This is dead simple, does not require setting any ssh-config or touch any configuration of the repository you are trying to pull. See this for details.

Or use this script instead https://gist.github.com/cr0wg4n/39e691d5f2140bce641448b0f56e6a9e 😄

switch-github-user.sh

#!/bin/bash
gh_user="${1:-Nothing}"

if [ "$gh_user" == 'USERNAME_1' ]; then
  ssh-add -D
  git config --global user.email "USERNAME_1_EMAIL"
  ssh-add /PRIVATE_KEY_PATH/.ssh/github-USERNAME_1
elif [ "$gh_user" == 'USERNAME_2' ]; then
  ssh-add -D
  git config --global user.email "USERNAME_2_EMAIL"
  ssh-add /PRIVATE_KEY_PATH/.ssh/github-USERNAME_2
else
  echo 'Nothing was applied'
  exit 1
fi
echo "$gh_user applied!"
git config user.email
ssh -T git@github.com
exit 0

# TO USE 
# ./switch-github-user.sh USERNAME_1

Minimal, single place. Assumes only 2 profiles, but that is often the case. I like it @cr0wg4n!

Minimal, single place. Assumes only 2 profiles, but that is often the case. I like it @cr0wg4n!

Thanks @mbean-epc! We can refactor :D as need, but it is a simple answer to a simple problem hahaha :D

change the default host from "github.com" to "github.com-activehacker", then the ssh will recognize your ssh key which defined in ssh config.

ssh -T git@github.com-activehacker
git clone <Host in ssh config>:<github username>/<github repo name>.git
git clone github.com-activehacker:activehacker/mygit.git
git clone github.com-jexchan:jexchan/mygit.git

the only correct answer

@zjhken That work. I've effectively been using an automated form of that for a long time. It is great for terminals that preserve history that have engineers who know how to do reverse lookup. Bonus if the engineers are familiar with the auth error they would get if they forget.

ssh -T git@github.com-activehacker
git clone :/.git
git clone github.com-activehacker:activehacker/mygit.git
git clone github.com-jexchan:jexchan/mygit.git

In my case, git@ was essential.

git clone git@github.com-activehacker:activehacker/mygit.git
git clone git@github.com-jexchan:jexchan/mygit.git

I use this https://github.com/sageil/ghswitch on both mac and linux. I found it easier since I used email addresses as my comments when I created the ssh keys for my personal and professional accounts

Thank you a lot for this, I've struggled a long time to get this right.

I've mentioned your article in this SO question/answer:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/76952155/2391795

are you able to edit the GitHub UI so when you click the copy to clipboard you will get the different host? e.g. github.com-jexchan I'm scared I'm going to forget this change and be confused why the repo isn't cloning

sshCommand

Good catch! Defining the sshCommand is not described in most of the guides I've seen.
In case you have for instance two separate Github accounts and two separate projects (project A and project B) you'd like to have two separate ssh-keys for:

1. Open an A project's `.git/config` file

2. Add

  [core]
     ...
    sshCommand = ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_first_key

3. Do the same for your project B with `~/.ssh/id_second_key`

If only git had a url..sshCommand like https://git-scm.com/docs/git-config#Documentation/git-config.txt-urlltbasegtinsteadOf then this whole problem could be simple in the global git config

[url "ssh://git@github.com/org1"]
  sshCommand = ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_org1
[url "ssh://git@github.com/org2"]
  sshCommand = ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_org2

come to think of it url fields for name, email, and signingkey would eliminate a lot of manual overriding

You savior. This actually fixed all my issues LOL

After digging for a while here's the issue I found and the fix:

This is the config file for ssh located @ ~/.ssh/config

#BitBucket Account
Host bb_work
	HostName bitbucket.org
	User git
	IdentityFile ~/.ssh/bb_work

#Personal account
Host gh_personal
	HostName github.com
	User git
	IdentityFile ~/.ssh/gh_personal

And this is the config file for the remote repo:

[remote "origin"]
      url = gh_personal:abhisri1997/mailer.git
      fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

You can notice that I have changed my remote repo URL from: git@github.com:abhisri1997/mailer.git to gh_personal:abhisri1997/mailer.git

How this works:

You'd like to establish an ssh connection to the GitHub server to read/write the data to your repo for that you have created the key by reading the above article.

Now whenever you do a git pull/push or whenever you want to establish a connection to GitHub using the git command

It will check your ssh config file to check if the host is defined with git@github.com but it will find nothing.

So it won't be able to shake the earlier created private and public keys.

So in order to do that we have to change our repo URL("git@github.com:abhisri1997/mailer.git ") to the HOST value (gh_personal) set in ~/.ssh/config

works 👌

I just spent an hour trying to follow the instructions in this gist and nothing worked, it kept trying to use the wrong host/key.

Turns out that at some point I had deleted my public key from my Github account.

Apparently ssh/git then automatically falls back to your other ssh key and doesn't tell you at all.

So uh... if nothing else works check your Github SSH settings. 😓

@abhisri1997 solution works for me too. Was stuck on this for too much time. +1

Thank you! This worked for me.

I've also written a pretty good Gist about another approach: https://gist.github.com/yinzara/bbedc35798df0495a4fdd27857bca2c1

Excellent write-ups! This and the linked article are both great to read through. I am new to SSH and GPG in GitHub so I needed to spend a lot of time to get up to speed.

FYI I recently got a new personal Macbook, so I found I've needed this sort of setup for git since I use one account for work, and another for personal stuff.

In case it's useful to others, I've gathered all the useful steps in the main steps, into a Bash/shell script. Helps for automation purposes, so e.g. less manual work, and also less things to remember.

Please do check it out and let me know (link below). I welcome any PRs or updates to script if needed. I tested this extensively on a Mac environment.

https://github.com/rnag/Mac-Quickstart/blob/main/scripts/bootstrap_ssh_for_github.sh

---

Updates:

• I liked @airtonix suggestion on creating a ~/.dotfiles folder and adding all project .gitconfig there, so I've updated the script to do that.
• I just got around to updating the script to handle semi-automated GPG key setup, for Git commit verification! Check it out. This simplifies the process a whole lot so you don't have to think about it, just copy paste some stuff around!

After running the script, file/directory structure in user home ~ would now look as follows:

.gitignore
Git-Projects/
├── Personal
└── Work
.dotfiles
├── Personal-github.gitconfig
└── Work-github.gitconfig
.ssh
├── config
├── id_ed25519_<gh_user>
├── id_ed25519_<gh_user>.pub
├── known_hosts

munging your .git/config remote is just going to end up being a hassle in the long run.

trust me, been there done that, never doing it again tomorrow.

the. most. portable. way is to setup your root gitconfig so that it uses the includeif.

edit: like mentioned here:
https://gist.github.com/jexchan/2351996?permalink_comment_id=4456452#gistcomment-4456452

The includeif stanza/directive modifies your git config on the fly based on the CWD of the git operation. Relevant to this thread, this is where we can teach git about the ssh_command, which is where you point to your shiny unique ssh key.

The end result is a set of dotfiles ~/.gitconfig, ~/.dotfiles/this.gitconfig, ~/.dotfiles/that.gitconfig you can carry around and a directory structure for your ~/Projects

~/.gitconfig

[core]
	editor = DISPLAY=:1 code --wait

[init]
	defaultBranch = master

[rerere]
	enabled = true

[includeIf "gitdir:Projects/Mine/Gitlab/"]
        path = ~/.dotfiles/mine-gitlab.gitconfig

[includeIf "gitdir:Projects/Mine/Github/"]
        path = ~/.dotfiles/mine-github.gitconfig

[includeIf "gitdir:Projects/Experiements/Github/"]
        path = ~/.dotfiles/mine-github.gitconfig

[includeIf "gitdir:Projects/Work/Github/SomeCompany"]
        path = ~/.dotfiles/work-somecompany.gitconfig

Personal Configs

~/.dotfiles/mine-gitlab.gitconfig

[user]
name = My Name
email = other.e@ma.il

~/.dotfiles/mine-github.gitconfig

[user]
name = My Name
email = mygithubusername@users.noreply.github'com
signingkey = DEADBEEF

[commit]
gpgsign = true

[gpg]
program = age

For the above, any git operations occurring within a path that matches either:

• Projects/Mine/Gitlab/
• Projects/Mine/GitHub/, or
• Projects/Experiements/Github/

will use my github config.

Work Configs

~/.dotfiles/work-github-somecompany.gitconfig

[core]
sshCommand = "ssh -o IdentitiesOnly -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa-mymachinename-github-somecompany -F /dev/null"

For the above, any git operation occuring in a directory that matches Projects/Work/Github/SomeCompany will specifically use a different ssh key despite my ~/.ssh/config declaring another for other general github ssh connections. The -o IdentitiesOnly tells ssh to use only the private key specified with the "-i" option and ignore any other keys in the SSH agent or on the remote server.

The main reasons I love this setup :

can just copy paste a github git repo url with wild abandon and paste it without having to remember the magical things to modify.

don't have to do anything in the ~/.ssh/config since what we really wanted this for was git and nothing else.

thank you, this work best for my need