How To Work With Multiple Github Accounts on your PC

work-with-multiple-github-accounts.md

How To Work With Multiple Github Accounts on a single Machine

Let suppose I have two github accounts, https://github.com/rahul-office and https://github.com/rahul-personal. Now i want to setup my mac to easily talk to both the github accounts.

NOTE: This logic can be extended to more than two accounts also. :)

The setup can be done in 5 easy steps:

Steps:

• Step 1 : Create SSH keys for all accounts
• Step 2 : Add SSH keys to SSH Agent
• Step 3 : Add SSH public key to the Github
• Step 4 : Create a Config File and Make Host Entries
• Step 5 : Cloning GitHub repositories using different accounts

Step 1

Create SSH keys for all accounts

First make sure your current directory is your .ssh folder.

     $ cd ~/.ssh

Syntax for generating unique ssh key for ann account is:

     ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "your-email-address" -f "github-username"

here,

-C stands for comment to help identify your ssh key

-f stands for the file name where your ssh key get saved

Now generating SSH keys for my two accounts

     ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "my_office_email@gmail.com" -f "github-rahul-office"
     ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "my_personal_email@gmail.com" -f "github-rahul-personal"

Notice here rahul-office and rahul-work are the username of my github accounts corresponding to my_office_email@gmail.com and my_personal_email@gmail.com email ids respectively.

After entering the command the terminal will ask for passphrase, leave it empty and proceed.

Now after adding keys , in your .ssh folder, a public key and a private will get generated.

The public key will have an extention .pub and private key will be there without any extention both having same name which you have passed after -f option in the above command. (in my case github-rahul-office and github-rahu-personal)

Step 2

Add SSH keys to SSH Agent

Now we have the keys but it cannot be used until we add them to the SSH Agent.

     ssh-add -K ~/.ssh/github-rahul-office
     ssh-add -K ~/.ssh/github-rahul-personal

You can read more about adding keys to SSH Agent here.

Step 3

Add SSH public key to the Github

For the next step we need to add our public key (that we have generated in our previous step) and add it to corresponding github accounts.

For doing this we need to:

1. Copy the public key

 We can copy the public key either by opening the github-rahul-office.pub file in vim and then copying the content of it.

     vim ~/.ssh/github-rahul-office.pub
     vim ~/.ssh/github-rahul-personal.pub

OR

We can directly copy the content of the public key file in the clipboard.

     pbcopy < ~/.ssh/github-rahul-office.pub
     pbcopy < ~/.ssh/github-rahul-personal.pub

2. Paste the public key on Github

• Sign in to Github Account
• Goto Settings > SSH and GPG keys > New SSH Key
• Paste your copied public key and give it a Title of your choice.

OR

• Sign in to Github
• Paste this link in your browser (https://github.com/settings/keys) or click here
• Click on New SSH Key and paste your copied key.

Step 4

Create a Config File and Make Host Entries

The ~/.ssh/config file allows us specify many config options for SSH.

If config file not already exists then create one (make sure you are in ~/.ssh directory)

     touch config

The commands below opens config in your default editor....Likely TextEdit, VS Code.

     open config

Now we need to add these lines to the file, each block corresponding to each account we created earlier.

     #rahul-office account
     Host github.com-rahul-office
          HostName github.com
          User git
          IdentityFile ~/.ssh/github-rahul-office

     #rahul-personal account
     Host github.com-rahul-personal
          HostName github.com
          User git
          IdentityFile ~/.ssh/github-rahul-personal

Step 5

Cloning GitHub repositories using different accounts

So we are done with our setups and now its time to see it in action. We will clone a repository using one of the account we have added.

Make a new project folder where you want to clone your repository and go to that directory from your terminal.

For Example: I am making a repository on my personal github account and naming it TestRepo Now for cloning the repo use the below command:

    git clone git@github.com-{your-username}:{owner-user-name}/{the-repo-name}.git

    [e.g.] git clone git@github.com-rahul-personal:rahul-personal/TestRepo.git

Finally

From now on, to ensure that our commits and pushes from each repository on the system uses the correct GitHub user — we will have to configure user.email and user.name in every repository freshly cloned or existing before.

To do this use the following commands.

     git config user.email "my_office_email@gmail.com"
     git config user.name "Rahul Pandey"
     
     git config user.email "my-personal-email@gmail.com"
     git config user.name "Rahul Pandey"

Pick the correct pair for your repository accordingly.

To push or pull to the correct account we need to add the remote origin to the project

     git remote add origin git@github.com-rahul-personal:rahul-personal
     
     git remote add origin git@github.com-rahul-office:rahul-office

Now you can use:

     git push
     
     git pull

P.S:
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Thank you!

I also realized that if you want to keep your personal as the default, you can change your ~/.ssh/config to resemble this:

Host github.com-work-github
     HostName github.com
     User git
     IdentityFile ~/.ssh/work-github

Host github.com
     HostName github.com
     User git
     IdentityFile ~/.ssh/personal-github

This was great thank you!

Thank you ;)

Just dropping this here for anyone else that runs into it.

If your GitHub org has SSO enabled, there is an additional step that must be taken.
If not done, you will run into this error:

ERROR: The `Foo' organization has enabled or enforced SAML SSO. To access
this repository, you must use the HTTPS remote with a personal access token
or SSH with an SSH key and passphrase
that has been authorized for this organization. Visit
https://docs.github.com/articles/authenticating-to-a-github-organization-with-saml-single-sign-on/ for more information.

fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights

Per the doc link above, you just need to go to your SSH keys page and click Configure SSO next to the SSH key you just added. Then select the proper Organization and click Authorize.

I was facing with user name issue and this video solved the problem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lA0oPoFCAE&ab_channel=JcMiron

awesome tutorial, thanks a lot!

Thank you! Great tutorial

Great, thanks!

Thanks !!

Thanks man!

Well elaborated! a very helpful one. Thank you.

NVM I got it, had to git remote set-url origin instead of adding it, since when a repo is cloned it automatically adds a remote origin.

Did you change the URL @iankingcoop

Thanks for step-by-step guide

this is cool

Just dropping this here for anyone else that runs into it.

If your GitHub org has SSO enabled, there is an additional step that must be taken. If not done, you will run into this error:

ERROR: The `Foo' organization has enabled or enforced SAML SSO. To access
this repository, you must use the HTTPS remote with a personal access token
or SSH with an SSH key and passphrase
that has been authorized for this organization. Visit
https://docs.github.com/articles/authenticating-to-a-github-organization-with-saml-single-sign-on/ for more information.

fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights

Per the doc link above, you just need to go to your SSH keys page and click Configure SSO next to the SSH key you just added. Then select the proper Organization and click Authorize.

YES Thanks. Spent about two days trying to get this working and I had this same issue. I feel like there should be a prompt to ask the user to authorize when a key is added.

Thanks man!

My configuration working fine with two accounts added, after couple of days have added another account configuration in the same way mentioned above.
Now only new added account os working fine not the previous one's any help?

@pardeepenverx Try adding the corresponding remote for the local repository.

It works but not with submodules. Submodule URLs are baked into the repository .gitmodules file.

Thanks you !!

Is there a not retarded way to work with multiple github accounts?

when I tried git push -u origin main in my second github account

this error message appears

ERROR: Repository not found.
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.

can you help me?

I was having the same issue, and this is how I fixed it

first checked if my SSH connection was working or not using this command:
ssh -T git@github.com-{user.name}

it showed me a different account username, which helped me understand I wans't using the proper alias. Then used this command to add the key
ssh-add ~/.ssh/{ssh-key-name} and the used the above command to confirm its using the right alias now.
And it worked!

this is work too, it more normal

Host github.com
     HostName github.com
     User git
     IdentityFile ~/.ssh/work-github

Host github.com
     HostName github.com
     User git
     IdentityFile ~/.ssh/personal-github

Please remove your comment, it is misleading people. Indeed you shouldn't do that if you want to manage several accounts.

@oddantfr
The HostName must be different for now when you clone a repo it will use the default git account,

Is there a not retarded way to work with multiple github accounts?

Right

thank you for clear instructions

Yes (indeed) thank you from my other account too :-D

Great explanation man

💯