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/

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