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Sunday 16 November 2014

Managing ssh keys for multiple GitHub accounts

  1. Create ssh keys using the following command:
    ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "xxx@youremail.com"
    ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "yyy@youremail.com"
    
    
    Each email corresponds to a different github account. 
    It is also possible to have repository specific deploy keys.
    If a repository does not have its own deploy key, access to it 
    is given by the repo's github account ssh keys. 
  2.  Two pairs of ssh keys are created in ~/.ssh dir:
    1. ~/.ssh/id_rsa_xxx
      ~/.ssh/id_rsa_yyy
      with names chosen in step 1.
  3. Add keys using:
    1.   ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa_xxx
       ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa_yyy
      This adds adds your RSA identities to the authentication agent,  
      ssh-agent, a program for storing private keys used for public key 
      authentication.
  4.  Use ssh-add -l to list all added keys
  5. Associate the keys with the Github accounts according to instructions on:
    1.  https://help.github.com/articles/generating-ssh-keys/
  6. On your local machine configure GitHub settings. Add configuration to ~/.ssh/config:
    1. #xxx account
      Host github.com-xxx
          HostName github.com 
          User git
          IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_xxx
      
      #yyy account
      Host github.com-yyy
          HostName github.com
          User git 
          IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_yyy
      Hosts github.com-xxx, github.com-yyy are arbitrary names,
      that help distinguish the two accounts 
  7.  Test authorization to connect to GitHub:
    1. ssh -T git@github.com-xxx
    2. ssh -T git@github.com-yyy
  8. Clone a repository, using the relevant Host alias:
    1. git clone git@github.com-xxx:xxx/repo_aaa.git [aaa_dir]
  9.  The general git configuration can be found in ~/.gitconfig. The entries can be either added manually or through git commands:
    1.  git config --global ... (user.email, user.name etc)
  10.  For repository specific configuration (repository's .git/config): 
    1. cd repo_aaa (or aaa_dir)
    2. git config user.name "X XXX
    3. git config user.email "xxx@gmail.com"
    4. git remote set-url origin  git@github.com-xxx:xxx/repo_aaa.git
      1. This will result in the following setup:
        [remote "origin"]
                url = git@github.com-xxx:xxx/repo_aaa.git
        where
        github.com-xxx corresponds to the Host value in step 6
        xxx            corresponds to the github username 

NOTE

  • Configuration, that is present only in the global git config file ~/.gitconfig (setup either through the git config --global comand or manually) and not overriden by cloned repository's .git/config setup, will be used.
  • Setting up the [remote "origin"] block in the global configuration, results in a bizarre situation, where one can be cloning an empty (well, any) github repo, and the local clone will have an unexpected content (corresponding to the remote origin url, ie a different repo).

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