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SSH

General guides relating to the use of OpenSSH

Setting up SSH keys with GitHub

Section titled “Setting up SSH keys with GitHub”

If you are using GitHub for version control, you can set up SSH keys to authenticate with your GitHub account without having to enter your password every time.

First, generate a new SSH key pair:

Terminal window
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -a 100 -f ~/.ssh/github

This will generate a public and private key pair.

Now edit you ~/.ssh/config file and add the following lines:

~/.ssh/config
Host github.com
    AddKeysToAgent yes
    UseKeychain yes # macOS only
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/github

You can then add the public key to your GitHub account by following these steps:

  1. Open your GitHub account settings. Step 1
  2. Go to the “SSH and GPG keys” section. Step 2
  3. Click on “New SSH key”. Step 3
  4. Enter a title for your key. Step 4
  5. Paste the contents of your public key file into the “Key” field. Step 5
  6. Click “Add SSH key”.

Test the connection by running ssh -T git@github.com and you should see a message indicating that the connection was successful.

Now, you can use the SSH key to log in to your GitHub account without having to enter your password every time.