Multiple SSH keys for multiple GitHub accounts

multiple_ssh_setting.md

Multiple SSH keys for multiple GitHub accounts

This is assuming that you already have a main git identity configured and a corresponding ssh key pair in ~/.ssh/ (on linux)

$ cd ~/.ssh/
$ ls
$ config  id_rsa  id_rsa.pub  known_hosts

If you are not there yet, refer to this GitHub howto.

We also assume that you have second GitHub account with username seconduser and email address [email protected].

Create a second ssh key pair

Create a new ssh key pair

$ cd ~/.ssh/
$ ls
$ config  id_rsa  id_rsa.pub  known_hosts
$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "[email protected]" -f id_rsa_seconduser

You now have a second key pair

$ ls
config  id_rsa  id_rsa_seconduser  id_rsa_seconduser.pub  id_rsa.pub  known_hosts

Then, add the new private key to your ssh authentication agent

$ ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa_seconduser

You can delete all cached keys

$ ssh-add -D

Finally, you can check your saved keys

$ ssh-add -l

Modify the ssh config

Edit file ~/.ssh/config and add

# first (default) account
Host github.com
	HostName github.com
	User git
	IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa

# seconduser account
Host github.com-seconduser
	HostName github.com
	User git
	IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_seconduser

Configure a repo to use your second identity

$ cd some-repo
$ git config user.name "seconduser"
$ git config user.email "[email protected]"

And edit the repo git config file .git/config to change the remote server

  ...
  [remote "origin"]
- 	url = [email protected]:seconduser/some-repo.git
+ 	url = [email protected]:parolepol/some-repo.git
  ...

Clone your repo and modify your Git config

clone your repo git clone [email protected]:activehacker/gfs.git gfs_jexchan

cd gfs_jexchan and modify git config

$ git config user.name "jexchan"
$ git config user.email "[email protected]" 

$ git config user.name "activehacker"
$ git config user.email "[email protected]" 

or you can have global git config $ git config --global user.name "jexchan" $ git config --global user.email "[email protected]"

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/