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I have several repos on github, and two different accounts. My accounts are the creators of both repos which are discussed below (username1 created repo1 and username2 created repo2).

How do I configure tortoisegit to set which credentials (putty key) to use when connecting to each github repo?

On Tortoisegit > settings > Git > Remote, I have repo1 configured as:

    Remote: origin
    URL: git@github.com:username1/MyRepo1.git
    Push URL: (blank)
    Putty Key: path/to/account1.ppk

And repo1 configured as:

    Remote: origin
    URL: https://github.com/username2/myRepo2.git
    Push URL: (blank)
    Putty Key: path/to/account2.ppk

However, when I try to push to the first repo, I get the error:

    git.exe push --progress "origin" master:master
    ERROR: Permission to username1/MyRepo1.git denied to username2. <-- why is username2 showing up here?!?
    fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

... why is it trying to use username2 (which is not configured anywhere on repo1) to connect? And where can I configure which username to use when connecting?

I tried changing the settings in Tortoisegit > settings > Git, to set Name: username1 and Email: user1@mydomain.com but it didn't make any difference (got the same error message when trying to push).

I've tried to follow the explanations on the accepted answer of TortoiseGit - Multiple GitHub repositories with different key pairs each , however, I cannot work out what to do for any of them...

  1. Use PuTTY sessions as described in ...

Well... the instructions on both links are too general to be useful. There's no concrete example to work with.

  1. Use OpenSSH...

It basically says "change to 'ssh'... but that just creates new problems. How do I configure OpenSSH to make the connection? Or tell it which credentials to use for which repo? Again... no concrete examples.

  1. Use https with...

If I change the connection for repo1 to https://github.com/username1/MyRepo1.git then I get the error fatal: unable to access 'https://github.com/username1/MyRepo1.git/': The requested URL returned error: 403

So I changed it to https://username1@github.com/username1/MyRepo1.git and then I got a pop-up asking me to log into github. I did that as a last resort and it (seems to have) worked, however, I want to use the ssh keys, not login based auth.

So... back to the question: how do I configure TortoiseGit to use different SSH credentials to connect to different repos?

And, for bonus points... can I configure a default set of credentials for TortoiseGit to use and then just over-ride those on a repo-by-repo basis when something different is needed? If so, how? (I ask because this seems to be what is happening unintentionally, so I wonder if there's a way to intentionally use it as a feature!)

Thank you for reading, and thanks in advance for helping!

caponica
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1 Answers1

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how do I configure TortoiseGit to use different SSH credentials to connect to different repos?

First, use SSH URLS for both repositories.

Since repo2 is configured with https://github.com/username2/myRepo2.git, the SSH key is simply ignored.
And that is why Tortoise mentioned username2

You need git@github.com:username2/myRepo2.git if you want your associated SSH key to be used at all.

VonC
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  • The first time I tried this and pushed, it still used the old name but I guess it was just cached? Your answer gave me confidence to stick with it and it's now using the correct user. Thanks! – caponica Sep 26 '22 at 14:19
  • @caponica Great! Well done. – VonC Sep 26 '22 at 14:27