Multiple GitHub Accounts & SSH Config

user_59806 0
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I'm having some trouble getting two different SSH keys/GitHub accounts to play well together. I have the following setup:

Repos accessible from one account using git@github.com:accountname

Repos accessible from another account using git@github.com:anotheraccount

Each account has its own SSH key. Both SSH keys have been added and I have created a config file. I don't believe the config file is correct though. I'm not quite sure how to specify that repos accessed using git@github.com:accountname should use id_rsa and git@github.com:anotheraccount should use id_rsa_anotheraccount.

ssh-keys ssh github
13 Answers

A possibly simpler alternative to editing the ssh config file (as suggested in all other answers), is to configure an individual repository to use a different (e.g. non-default) ssh key.

Inside the repository for which you want to use a different key, run:

git config core.sshCommand 'ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa_anotheraccount'

If your key is passhprase-protected and you don't want to type your password every time, you have to add it to the ssh-agent. Here's how to do it for ubuntu and here for macOS.

It should also be possible to scale this approach to multiple repositories using global git config and conditional includes (see example).

user_39378500

Follow these steps to fix this it looks too long but trust me it won't take more than 5 minutes:

Step-1: Create two ssh key pairs:

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "your_email@youremail.com"

Step-2: It will create two ssh keys here:

~/.ssh/id_rsa_account1
~/.ssh/id_rsa_account2

Step-3: Now we need to add these keys:

ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa_account2
ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa_account1
  • You can see the added keys list by using this command: ssh-add -l
  • You can remove old cached keys by this command: ssh-add -D

Step-4: Modify the ssh config

cd ~/.ssh/
touch config

subl -a config or code config or nano config

Step-5: Add this to config file:

#Github account1
Host github.com-account1
    HostName github.com
    User account1
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_account1

#Github account2
Host github.com-account2
    HostName github.com
    User account2
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_account2

Step-6: Update your .git/config file:

Step-6.1: Navigate to account1's project and update host:

[remote "origin"]
        url = git@github.com-account1:account1/gfs.git

If you are invited by some other user in their git Repository. Then you need to update the host like this:

[remote "origin"]
            url = git@github.com-account1:invitedByUserName/gfs.git

Step-6.2: Navigate to account2's project and update host:

[remote "origin"]
        url = git@github.com-account2:account2/gfs.git

Step-7: Update user name and email for each repository separately if required this is not an amendatory step:

Navigate to account1 project and run these:

git config user.name "account1"
git config user.email "account1@domain.com"

Navigate to account2 project and run these:

git config user.name "account2"
git config user.email "acccount2@doamin.com"
user_41372090

I posted the technique I use to deal with these here

user_16332510

Simplest way to use multiple Git accounts and clone without any changes would be to add your username to the ssh config.

  1. Open ~/.ssh/config. Create if one doesn't exist
  2. Add your host entry as following
Host github.com:<YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME>
  AddKeysToAgent yes
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/<YOUR_SSH_KEY_FILENAME>

Replace <YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME> with your desired github username (personal or work) Replace <YOUR_SSH_KEY_FILENAME> with your keyfile name in .ssh folder (ex: id_ed25519). Add a host record for each of the github account you want to maintain.

Now git clone would be simple as git clone github.com:<YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME>/your-repo.git. No custom gihub domains to remember when cloning ;-)

Made a gist with further information https://gist.github.com/udantha/fed5439630eaf4651272f4fba6e1c6a3

user_6079370
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