🐙 GitHub - SSH Key Generation

📍
🐙 GitHub - SSH Key Generation

Password authentication was removed from GitHub on August 13, 2021. Instead of that users now need to use PAT(Personal Access Token) instead. SSH (Secure Shell Protocol). These tokens are used instead of passwords. For a new user using SSH tokens may be overwhelming, GitHub has a detailed blog: Generating a new SSH key and adding it to the ssh-agent.

🔐 How to generate the SSH token?

What is SSH?

The Secure Shell Protocol (SSH) is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network. Its most notable applications are remote login and command-line execution.

Before generating the token the following packages needs to be installed on the system.

sudo apt install ssh
sudo apt install openssh-client
sudo apt install openssh-server

After installing these packages open the terminal and execute the following command.

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "your_email@example.com"

This command generates the SSH token on the local machine with the provided email as label.

> Generating public/private ALGORITHM key pair.

> Enter a file in which to save the key (/home/YOU/.ssh/id_ALGORITHM):[Press enter]

On this prompt press enter as this will create the file at the default location.

> Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): [Type a passphrase]
> Enter same passphrase again: [Type passphrase again]

Enter your secret passphrase, remember twice. This is the first stage of SSH key setup. Once key is generated it needs to be added to a ssh-agent. But why?

If your key has a passphrase and you don't want to enter the passphrase every
time you use the key, you can add your key to the `SSH agent`. The SSH agent
manages your SSH keys and remembers your passphrase.

The SSH agent is started using the following command. This command will return the pid.

eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"

Once the SSH agent is started, the ssh key is added using the following command. This command prompts for the passphrase that was used during ssh key generation, enter that passphrase.

ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_ed25519

🔑 Adding SSH key to GitHub account

Generated SSH key gen could be added to GitHub account. But what key to add? Remember SSH has private and public keys. The local machine contains the private key, that only the machine on which it was generated knows and for authentication the public key needs to be added to the GitHub account.

The following command displays the public key. Copy the text that appears after this command, don’t copy any whitespace after the end.

cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub

Once the key is copied, go to GitHub and follow the steps as mentioned,

  • Open settings and click on SSH and GPG Keys option.

  • Click on New SSH key or Add SSH Key.

  • Add title, it should be descriptive, like local machine etc.

  • Paste the copied SSH public key and click on Add SSH Key.

Once these steps are completed the process of generating and adding new ssh key to the GitHub account is done.

✅ How to use it?

When cloning the repository make sure to select the SSH and not HTTPS. HTTPS link starts with https://github.com and SSH link starts with git@github.com:.

git clone git@github.com:github/github.git

It will prompt for the SSH passphrase which was used when generating the ssh keys.

🚀 Conclusion

This is a quick guide into how to generate and add the SSH key to GitHub account. The same generated key could be used for other services such as`GitLab` and others.

For more detailed info please visit: Connecting to GitHub with SSH

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