CODEWITHSUNDEEP
gitgithubsshmacos-sierra
user8276400
user8276400

Reputation:

Github ssh key macOS Sierra

I've been having problems with gitHub's SSH Key for Mac Sierra here: https://help.github.com/articles/generating-a-new-ssh-key-and-adding-it-to-the-ssh-agent/

I've been able to follow the steps of

  1. ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "[email protected]"
  2. eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"

However from this part onwards, nothing works

  1. I do not understand what they mean by "modify your ~/.ssh/config file " & the Host * AddKeysToAgent yes UseKeychain yes IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa

  2. ssh-add -K ~/.ssh/id_rsa does not work on terminal either, as the results says 'no such file or directory'

I saved the key file to my Desktop folder when ssh-keygen prompted me for a location.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 3511

Answers (2)

tripleee
tripleee

Reputation: 189809

Move the key to .ssh where it belongs, and/or create a .ssh/config file and tell it where to look for the key.

If .ssh doesn't exist, you have to create it first, obviously.

# Create ~/.ssh if missing
if ! [ -d "$HOME"/.ssh ], then
    mkdir -p "$HOME"/.ssh
    # Make it private
    chmod 700 "$HOME"/.ssh
fi

# Move files from Desktop
# Assumes id_rsa* matches public and private key files,
# and no others
mv -i "$HOME"/Desktop/id_rsa* "$HOME"/.ssh

# Make them private, too
chmod go-rwx "$HOME"/.ssh/id_rsa*

# Create config file, if missing
test -e "$HOME"/.ssh/config ||
printf '%s\n' 'Host *' \
    '    AddKeysToAgent yes' \
    '    UseKeychain yes' \
    '    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa' >"$HOME"/.ssh/config

You can just copy/paste these commands to the Terminal, though putting them in a file like /tmp/sshcommands and running it with bash /tmp/sshcommands might be slightly less jarring.

Obviously, you should read up on these commands enough to understand at least roughly what's going on here. Probably the key realization is that ssh doesn't know you have a Desktop folder and would not want to look there for the key even if it knew. (You could change the final IdentityFile statement to actually change that, but really, at this point you are better off learning the standard practice.)

Upvotes: 2

unixia
unixia

Reputation: 4330

When you did an ssh-keygen, you would have been prompted for the location to save the keys in. It is by default ~/.ssh/. If you saved them somewhere else, you should try locate id_rsa and then do ssh-add <path where id_rsa is>.

Upvotes: 3

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