It's fairly easy to follow GitHub's official documentation on how to add your SSH key to your account. This version is quickier and you can find all necessary commands below. Follow this if you use a Linux distribution.
You can follow this procedure with a few modifications for GitLab and Bitbucket.
Generating a SSH key
Check the existence of a key:
ls -al ~/.ssh
The filenames of the public keys are one of the following:
- id_dsa.pub
- id_ecdsa.pub
- id_ed25519.pub
- id_rsa.pub <-- that's mine
Generate a new SSH key if necessary
ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "your_email@example.com"
You'll see this:
> Enter a file in which to save the key (/home/you/.ssh/id_rsa): [Press enter]
Just [press enter] as instructed to use the default location or type one of your preference.
Then you'll be prompt to define a passphrase. Be creative.
Adding an SSH key to GitHub
To get your ssh public key you can run ls -al ~/ssh
, identify you public key and then cat
its content to the console. For example:
cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
Then:
- Go to your GitHub SSH and GPG keys settings page.
- Click New SSH key.
- Choose a good title, like
Living Room Desktop SSH Key
. - Paste your SSH key on the
Key
text area.
Now all operations to/from GitHub (clone
, pull
, push
and others) can be performed safely without typing user and password every time.