Git windows add private key

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Git SSH Windows — пошаговое руководство

Дата размещения статьи 08/12/2019 👁31067

Last Updated :
03 Jun, 2024

An SSH (Secure Shell) key is a pair of cryptographic keys used for authenticating and securing network communications over the SSH protocol. SSH keys are commonly used to securely access remote systems, transfer files, and execute commands on remote machines without passwords.

Components of an SSH Key

Private Key:

• The private key is kept secret and stored securely on the user’s local machine.
• It is used to decrypt encrypted messages with the corresponding public key.

Public Key:

• The public key is meant to be shared with the remote systems you want to access.
• It encrypts messages that can only be decrypted with the corresponding private key.

Now let’s start by generating an SSH key to be used in our Github account:

Step 1: Generate a New SSH Key

If you don’t already have an SSH key, you’ll need to generate one. If you already have one, you can skip to Step 2.

• Open a terminal on your computer.
• Generate a new SSH key using the ssh-keygen command:

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

• If your system doesn’t support the ed25519 algorithm, you can use rsa:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "your_email@example.com"

Replace «your_email@example.com» with your GitHub email address.

Follow the prompts:

• When asked to «Enter a file in which to save the key,» you can press Enter to accept the default location.
• When prompted, you can optionally enter a passphrase for added security.

Картинка с сайта: www.geeksforgeeks.org

Note: It is asking for overwrite because i have already generated a ssh key earlier.

Step 2: Start the SSH Agent

• Start the SSH agent in the background:

Start-Service ssh-agent

• Add your SSH private key to the SSH agent:

ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_ed25519

• If you used the RSA algorithm, the command will be:

ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Картинка с сайта: www.geeksforgeeks.org

Started the ssh-agent and added the private key.

Step 3: Add the SSH Key to Your GitHub Account

• Copy the SSH public key to your clipboard:

cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub

If you used RSA:

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

• Select and copy the output starting with ssh-ed25519 or ssh-rsa.

Log in to your GitHub account.

Navigate to SSH and GPG keys settings:

• Click on your profile picture in the top-right corner and select «Settings».
• In the left sidebar, click on «SSH and GPG keys».

Картинка с сайта: www.geeksforgeeks.org

Add a new SSH key:

1. Click on the «New SSH key» button.
2. In the «Title» field, add a descriptive label for the new key (e.g., «My Laptop»).
3. In the «Key» field, paste the SSH key you copied in Step 3.1.
4. Click «Add SSH key».

Картинка с сайта: www.geeksforgeeks.org

Confirm your GitHub password to complete the process.

Картинка с сайта: www.geeksforgeeks.org

Successfully added ssh key:

Step 4: Test Your SSH Connection

• Open a terminal.
• Test the connection to GitHub

ssh -T git@github.com

You might see a warning the first time you connect:

The authenticity of host 'github.com (IP ADDRESS)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is SHA256:... 
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?

Type yes to continue.

• Verify successful connection:

If everything is set up correctly, you should see a message like:

Hi username! You've successfully authenticated, but GitHub does not provide shell access

You’ve successfully added an SSH key to your GitHub account.

Картинка с сайта: www.geeksforgeeks.org

Now you can clone repositories, push changes, and perform other Git operations over SSH without needing to enter your password each time.

Table Of Contents

• Pre-requisites
• When to use SSH keys instead of HTTPS
  • Git Bash
  • Github Desktop Application
• Generate new SSH key
• Add public SSH key to your GitHub account
• Add private SSH key to the ssh-agent
• Use SSH over HTTPS
• Verification
• References

Pre-requisites

• Git Bash

When to use SSH keys instead of HTTPS

• Your corporate firewall blocks port 22, then even if you have set the remote origin to use HTTPS url, the authentication will fail as it is done via SSH.

Remedy is to set up SSH keys and use SSH over HTTPS port 443.

Below are some of the errors different applications throw when the port is blocked and HTTPS remote url is used.

Git Bash

When you try to push your changes, both Github Login and OpenSSH prompt asking for your username and password will fail with error remote no anonymous write access. fatal authentication failed for github.

Github Desktop Application

You will be able to login to your github desktop application as the authentication is done via HTTPS. However, when you try to push your changes it will result in authentication failure.

Below is the logs captured by the desktop application showing that the git push is trying to authenticate via SSH.

2019-09-22T13:16:46.927Z - info: [ui] Executing push: git -c credential.helper= -c protocol.version=2 push origin master:master --progress (took 21.740s)
2019-09-22T13:16:46.927Z - error: [ui] `git -c credential.helper= -c protocol.version=2 push origin master:master --progress` exited with an unexpected code: 128.
stderr:
ssh: connect to host github.com port 22: Connection timed out
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.

(The error was parsed as 2: Authentication failed. Some common reasons include:

- You are not logged in to your account: see File > Options.
- You may need to log out and log back in to refresh your token.
- You do not have permission to access this repository.
- The repository is archived on GitHub. Check the repository settings to confirm you are still permitted to push commits.
- If you use SSH authentication, check that your key is added to the ssh-agent and associated with your account.)

Generate new SSH key

• Run Git Bash.

• Generate SSH key with your email id as comment.

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "your_email@example.com"

• When you’re prompted to “Enter a file in which to save the key,” press Enter to save the key in the default location (/c/Users/username/.ssh/id_rsa). Your public key will also get saved here.

• Copy the public key to clipboard.

$ clip < ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Add public SSH key to your GitHub account

Go to Settings in your Github account to add the SSH public key.

Under SSH keys tab, select New SSH key.

Give a title and paste the key in the text area.

Картинка с сайта: rharshad.com

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Add private SSH key to the ssh-agent

Git bash tool comes with a ssh-agent.

Create a new ~/.profile (or) ~/.bashrc file by running below command in git bash.

Paste below script into your ~/.profile (or) ~/.bashrc file to auto launch the ssh-agent whenever you run your git bash shell.

env=~/.ssh/agent.env

agent_load_env () { test -f "$env" && . "$env" >| /dev/null ; }

agent_start () {
    (umask 077; ssh-agent >| "$env")
    . "$env" >| /dev/null ; }

agent_load_env

# agent_run_state: 0=agent running w/ key; 1=agent w/o key; 2= agent not running
agent_run_state=$(ssh-add -l >| /dev/null 2>&1; echo $?)

if [ ! "$SSH_AUTH_SOCK" ] || [ $agent_run_state = 2 ]; then
    agent_start
    ssh-add
elif [ "$SSH_AUTH_SOCK" ] && [ $agent_run_state = 1 ]; then
    ssh-add
fi

unset env

This script will load the identities in the ssh agent from your default location ~/.ssh/id_rsa.

Identity added: /c/Users/username/.ssh/id_rsa (your_email@example.com)

Use SSH over HTTPS

This step is required only if your corporate firewall is blocking port 22.

Create a new config file in your .ssh directory i.e. /c/Users/username/.ssh/config

Paste below contents in the file to use port 443 for SSH connections to host ssh.github.com.

Host github.com
  Hostname ssh.github.com
  Port 443

Run below command in git bash to verify that the configuration is working. Ignore any authentication failures.

$ ssh -vT git@github.com

OpenSSH_8.0p1, OpenSSL 1.1.1c  28 May 2019
debug1: Reading configuration data /c/Users/username/.ssh/config
debug1: /c/Users/username/.ssh/config line 1: Applying options for github.com
debug1: Connecting to ssh.github.com [192.30.253.122] port 443.
debug1: Connection established.

You can see that the SSH connection is now established via port 443.

Verification

To check if everything works as expected perform below steps:

• Run new git bash shell.

• Check if the identity has been added to the ssh agent.

• Check that the key is being used by trying to connect to git@github.com.

$ ssh -vT git@github.com

OpenSSH_8.0p1, OpenSSL 1.1.1c  28 May 2019
debug1: Reading configuration data
debug1: Offering public key
debug1: Server accepts key
debug1: Authentication succeeded (publickey).
Authenticated to ssh.github.com

• Clone the repo using the SSH url.

Going forward, every push/pull will use the SSH keys to authenticate with Github.

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References

https://help.github.com/en/articles/connecting-to-github-with-ssh

https://help.github.com/en/articles/using-ssh-over-the-https-port

In this article, we will see how to configure SSH keys in git for windows.

What is SSH?

SSH (secure shell) is a protocol used for secure communication between two computers. SSH uses a key-pair also known as public key and private key for the secure authentication between the client & server.

The public key is stored on the server side whereas the private key is stored on the client side (Local machine). During the connection, server uses public key to authenticate with the client i.e. local machine.

Generating SSH key pair

To work with git, we will need to generate an SSH key pair.

Install the git from the following link

After installing the git, we will get a Git bash terminal. Run the following command in the git bash terminal.

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "[email protected]"

After entering the above command, we will be prompted to enter a file and passphrase for the private key. We need this private key file to configure the git. Now, we will get a new RSA key pair with a length of 4096 bits and it will be associated with the above specified email address.

On windows, the default location for the SSH keys are %userprofile%\.ssh\. In file explorer, open the above directory and you will see two files i.e. id_rsa & id_rsa.pub. These are the private and public key files.

On Linux, the default location for SSH keys are <strong>/home/<username>/.ssh/</strong>

Configuring the git with SSH keys in windows:

Now, we need to configure the git with SSH keys that we generated in the previous step. Run the following command in the git bash:

ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Please note, id_rsa is the default file name of the private key. If you have provided a different name while generating the private key, please use the same name.

Configuring the git server with public key

Finally, we need to configure the git server with public key. Open the id_rsa.pub file and copy its contents.

1. Login to your git account.
2. Open the account settings & navigate to SSH keys section.
3. Click the “Add SSH key” button and paste the public key into the text box and save the changes.