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,
- Create SSH keys for each github.com account and bitbucket.org account
- Register the correct SSH keys with the correct github.com account and bitbucket.org account
- Create a git config file
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 “[email protected]”
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.
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
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.
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
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 [email protected]
To test connection with bitbucket run the command
ssh -T [email protected]
To test connection with azure run the command
ssh -T [email protected]
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).