Multiple Accounts and SSH Keys
Now that I’m officially a self-employed freelancer I plan to blog more frequently. In the past I’ve rarely written very technical articles, but I imagine there are many designer/front-end developer types like me who struggle with this stuff. Tomorrow I’ll post a big responsive design case study, I promise.
Today I moved my private code repositories onto Bitbucket — my personal WordPress theme and other “secret projects”. I don’t have the disposable income anymore for premium accounts! I’m keeping my open-source projects on GitHub (while it remains fashionable).
Multiple SSH keys
Problem is, Bitbucket doesn’t allow you to use the same SSH key with more than one Bitbucket account. I still have my old work account to tidy up loose ends.
As GitHub explains you can generate an SSH key like so:
cd ~/.ssh
ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "[email protected]"You are then prompted for an optional password. After the key is generate you copy & paste it into your GitHub or Bitbucket account settings. On Mac OS X (10.8), which I’m using, copying to the clipboard is simple:
pbcopy < ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pubWith multiple Bitbucket accounts (and I assume GitHub too) you need multiple SSH keys. To generate a second key with a different name:
ssh-keygen -t rsa -f ~/.ssh/accountB -C "[email protected]"To use multiple keys create a file at ~/.ssh/config with contents similar to:
With this set up I can clone with my default key as Bitbucket suggests:
git clone [email protected]:username/project.gitIf I want to clone a repository from my second account I can alter the command to use the second SSH key I generated:
git clone git@bitbucket-accountB:username/project.gitIn fact, if I wanted to I could have a different SSH key for every account I have; GitHub, Bitbucket, or any other service that requires one.
And that, my friends, is the sum of my knowledge in this area!
Update – 20th June 2023
I have more knowledge:
Stay safe!
