git public key for more repositories

Question

I'm having following problem.

I have 2 projects and I use github. 1st project went smooth, I created a public key, entered passphrase and pushed into github. no problem.

2nd project, I created another public key and when I want to push to the 2nd repository, it keeps asking for the passphrase for the 1st code /.ssh/id_rsa. but id_rsa holds my public key for 1st project. so of course, when I enter passphrase it wont work because it will try to push into 1st repo instead of 2nd.

how can I create a public key and tell git that I want to push to another repo?

thanks.

Answer 1

You need to declare your different ssh keys in a ~/.ssh/config file, as I explained in "How to manage multiple ssh keys in the ~/.ssh directory"

I would recommend not using the default name for the keys, but rather:

~/.ssh/proj1
~/.ssh/proj1.pub
~/.ssh/proj2
~/.ssh/proj2.pub

And then have a ~/.ssh/config like:

Host ghproj1
    User           git
    Hostname       github.com
    IdentityFile   ~/.ssh/proj1
    IdentitiesOnly yes
Host ghproj2
    User           git
    Hostname       github.com
    IdentityFile   ~/.ssh/proj2
    IdentitiesOnly yes

You need to change the origin url in both repos:

cd /path/to/cloned/proj1
git remote set-url origin ghproj1:yourProject1

cd /path/to/cloned/proj2
git remote set-url origin ghproj1:yourProject2

See more at:

• "How to change git ssh user for a remote push temporarily?"
• "Having Trouble Switching Github accounts on terminal"

An url like ghproj1:yourProject1 is an ssh one which will explicitly use the key you specified in ~/.ssh/config for the ghproj1 entry.

In the OP's case (answer below), the correct url would be:

~/.ssh/id_recaprojekt

Note: you need to specify the path to the private key (private, not public, not .pub)

cd /path/to/cloned/plastickychirurg
git remote set-url origin plastickychirurg:michalfeher/plastickychirurg.git

cd /path/to/cloned/recaprojekt
git remote set-url origin recaprojekt:michalfeher/recaprojekt.git

Note that I have added "Hostname" in the Host entries.

The all idea of those entries in the ~/.ssh/config file is to not (repeat not) put git or github.com in the url (it is done for you by the items associated to each entries):

So:

 git@github.com:michalfeher/recaprojekt.git

is the same as:

 recaprojekt:michalfeher/recaprojekt.git

Except the second url will use the ssh key