How to Add SSH Key to GitHub Account
Adding a ssh
key to your github
will allow you to access repositories via ssh
rather then https
.
Generating SSH Key Pair
Open a terminal and type –
sudo ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "A comment to identify this key"
Note
-C
stands for comment
. It’s a common practice to use an email address here but you can put anything to identify this ssh
key.
This command should invoke an interactive process for user inputs for the storage and pass-phrase
protect your secret key. If the default settings are used, this should create a RSA
key pair in the ~/.ssh/
directory.
Adding SSH Key to GitHub
Go to GitHub and loginto your acount. Go to settings
. Select SSH and GPG Keys
from the left menu.
Click on New SSH Key
. Once the new page opens, add a Title
for the ssh key. Choose something easy to remember and easy to identify this ssh key.
Now go back to the terminal
window and extract the content of the public
key. It’s usually saved as id_rsa.pub
. Considering the keys are saved in ~/.ssh/
cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
Copy the content of the public key and go back to GitHub
and paste the content under Key
and press Add SSK Key
.
If GitHub doesn’t show any error then the SSH key has been added successfully. You can see the newly added ssh key listed under SSH and GPG Keys
in the settings
menu now.
Enjoy!