Multiple SSH Keygen Configuration

If you have multiple git accounts it can be hard to push and pull from repositories with different credentials.

To do it the right way, we create an SSH key and configure it to the git account. But when you have multiple accounts like one in github.com and one in bitbucket.org, you cannot use one SSH key in both the accounts. So here is the solution,

1. Create SSH keys for each github.com account and bitbucket.org account
2. Register the correct SSH keys with the correct github.com account and bitbucket.org account
3. Create a git config file

Creating SSH Keys

You create a new key by running the following command, substituting for your own email address:

 cd ~
 mkdir .ssh
 cd ~/.ssh
 ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C “your_email@example.com”

You’ll be prompted to “Enter file in which to save the key”. So let’s assume you need to make accounts for a personal SSH key and a work one. You can create as many SSH keys as you like.

Call the first key rsa_personal, next secure the key with a passphrase. Now repeat the steps to create a new SSH key for your work account, name the file rsa_work and secure the key with a passphrase.

Listing all SSH Keys

To view all the SSH Keys generated and the one already present in system, go to folder ~/.ssh using following command:

 cd ~/.ssh
 ls

You will get below results

 rsa_personal rsa_personal.pub rsa_work_1 rsa_work_1.pub rsa_work_2 rsa_work_2.pub

Registering all SSH Keys

Copy keys and register SSH keys to github.com or bitbucket.org. To copy ssh key run below command:

 pbcopy < ~/.ssh/rsa_personal.pub

Paste the public key into SSH configuration in git account. Repeat that for all the keys.

Create git config

Now let’s create a git configuration file in ~/.ssh folder, so when we try to access keys ssh will know which one to use. Go to folder ~/.ssh using following command:

 cd ~/.ssh
 touch config
 nano config

Add the following configure for each SSH Key:

 #github account configuration
 Host github.com
        HostName ssh.github.com
        Port 443
        User git
        IdentityFile ~/.ssh/rsa_personal
 #bitbucket account
 Host bitbucket.org
        HostName altssh.bitbucket.org
        Port 443
        User git
        IdentityFile ~/.ssh/rsa_work_1
 #azure account
 Host azure.com
        HostName ssh.dev.azure.com
        Port 443
        User git
        IdentityFile ~/.ssh/rsa_work_2

Test Connection

Now, this is the final step. Verify your configuration and ssh key connection to confirm everything works smoothly.

To test connection with github run the command

ssh -T git@github.com

To test connection with bitbucket run the command

ssh -T git@bitbucket.org

To test connection with azure run the command

ssh -T git@ssh.dev.azure.com

Conclusion

If you followed along you hopefully now have everything you need to painlessly manage multiple projects hosted across different git accounts (github.com or bitbucket.org).